Colnett, Huggins, and Beale. 

 Spekm Whale, or Cachalot {Phjsettr Macrocephaluc). 



THE CRUISE OF THE ''CACHALOT." 



CHAPTER I. 



OUTWARD BOUND. 



At the age of eighteen, after a sea-experience of six 

 years from the time when I dodged about London 

 streets, a ragged Arab, with wits sharpened by the 

 constant fight for food, I found myself roaming the 

 streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts. How I came 

 to be there, of all places in the world, does not concern 

 this story at all, so I am not going to trouble my readers 

 with it ; enough to say that I was there, and mighty 

 anxious to get away. Sailor Jack is always hankering 

 for shore when he is at sea, but when he is " outward 

 bound " — that is, when his money is all gone — he is 

 like a cat in the rain there. 



So as my money was all gone, I was hungry for a 

 ship ; and when a long, keen-looking man with a goat- 

 like beard, and mouth stained with dry tobacco-juice, 



