236 WHALING AND FISHING. 



it is next to impossible to keep on board when 

 they once take it into their heads to leave. Used to 

 foreign lands and ways, they fear not to throiv 

 themselves at haphazard among any people, sine 

 that they will be able to work their way through 

 "somehow." Besides, to the sailor all other ships 

 are open, whereas the ignorant whaleman, making 

 his first trip, is worthless as a seaman, and utterly 

 unknowing of anything beyond his own ship. 



Notwithstanding all these disadvantages, how- 

 ever, nine out of ten in every whal^ crew desert, 

 generally paying for their foolhardiness by a most 

 wretched life of exposure, privation and poverty, 

 and in the end falling upon the tender mercies 

 of some American Consul, or working their way 

 homeward, broken down in health, and spirits, 

 and morals. 



Numberless stories are told of escapes of whale- 

 men from their vessels. I knew an old salt, who 

 was one of the crew of a vessel cruising for whales 

 on the coasts of Madagascar. The crew were dis- 

 satisfied and determined to leave, but the captain, 

 ,< v ware of their purpose, took care to enter only 

 aiose ports, principally on the island around which 

 chey were cruising, where he knew that his men 

 either dared not go ashore, because the natives 

 would kill them, >r where for ten dollars he could 

 have a whole crew caught and delivered to him. 



"We were lying in Nos Beh, (an island off the 

 the northwest coast of Madagascar)," said George 

 Thompson, who spun us this yarn, one midwatch, 



