THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 235 



feet long. The thinness of its blubber and the shortness of 

 its whalebone render it of far less value than others of its 

 species, while its extreme swiftness and strength make its 

 capture very hazardous. It is rarely struck with a harpoon, 

 a favorite expression of our whalemen being that it "will 

 run the nails out of the bottom of a boat." Scoresby 

 struck one, and says that it sounded and ran out four hun- 

 dred and eighty fathoms of line in a minute, or at the rate 

 of thirty - two miles in an hour. Singularly enough, this 

 whale, so seldom taken, is more correctly figured in natural 

 histories than either the sperm or right whales. 



Our meeting with a friendly ship afforded us some diver- 

 sion that we would not otherwise have had. "What ship's 

 that?" we hailed, as we passed almost under her stern. 

 "Adeline Gibbs, of Ne.w Bedford, Captain West, seventeen 

 months out, nine hundred barrels of oil. Come to, and I'll 



send a boat on board." We complied, and Mr. F , with 



a boat's crew, went on the Gibbs, while Captain West visit- 

 ed us. We braced forward and stood on the wind, and our 

 companion ship lay under our. lee. Of course I was exceed- 

 ingly anxious to gather all I could of the rich experiences 

 which would doubtless pass between the two captains, and 

 I had an opportunity as I stood at the helm. The two old 

 seamen retired to the cabin for a short time, to compare 

 chronometers, I suppose ; for their bronzed faces were a 

 flush redder when they came on deck again, and a brighter 

 gleam in their keen eyes expressed satisfaction at the com- 

 parison. Greenwich time from a case-bottle, as compared 

 with mean time from the " scuttle-butt," has a wonderful in- 

 fluence on "jawing tackle." As they came up the compan- 

 ion-way, my ear caught from Captain West, " Galapagos 

 old bull regular sodger spouting blood ;" and when they 

 took seats near the binnacle, Captain W^est lighted his cigar, 

 and went on with his story : 



