GETTING SOUTHWARD. 63 



Ain't six inch uv blubber anywhere 'bout his long ugly 

 carkiss ; en dat dirty lill' rag 'er whalebone he got in 

 his mouf, 'taint worf fifty cents. En mor'n dat, we pick 

 up a dead one when I uz in de ole Rainbow — done choke 

 hisself, I spec, en we cut him in. He stink fit ter pison 

 de debbil, en, after all, we get eighteen bar'l ob dirty oil 

 out ob him. Wa'nt worf de clean sparm scrap we use 

 ter bile him. G' 'way ! " Which emphatic adjuration, 

 addressed not to me, but to the unconscious monster 

 below, closed the lesson for the time. 



The calm still persisted, and, as usual, fish began 

 to abound, especially flying-fish. At times, disturbed 

 by some hungry bonito or dolphin, a shoal of them 

 would rise — a great wave of silver — and skim through 

 the air, rising and falling for perhaps a couj)le of 

 hundred yards before they again took to the water ; or 

 a solitary one of larger size than usual would suddenly 

 soar into the air, a heavy splash behind him showing 

 by how few inches he had missed the jaws of his 

 pursuer. Away he would go in a long, long curve, and, 

 meeting the ship in his flight, would rise in the air, 

 turn off at right angles to his former direction, and spin 

 away again, the whir of his wing-fins distinctly visible 

 as well as audible. At last he would incline to the 

 water, but just as he was about to enter it there would 

 be an eddy — the enemy was there waiting — and he would 

 rise twenty, thirty feet, almost perpendicularly, and dart 

 away fully a hundred yards on a fresh course before the 

 drying of his wing membranes compelled him to drop. 

 In the face of such a sight as this, which is of everyday 

 occurrence in these latitudes, how trivial and mis- 

 leading the statements made by the natural history 

 books seem. 



