66 TEE CRUISE OF THE ''CACHALOT:' 



once returned to the ship, having been absent only two 

 hours, during which we had caught sufficient to provide 

 all hands with three good meals. Not one of the crew 

 had ever seen or heard of such fishing before, so my 

 pride and pleasure may be imagined. A little learning 

 may be a dangerous thing at times, but it certainly is 

 often handy to have about you. The habit of taking 

 notice and remembering has often been the means of 

 saving many lives in suddenly-met situations of emer- 

 gency, at sea perhaps more than anywhere else, and 

 nothing can be more useful to a sailor than the practice 

 of keeping his weather-eye open. 



In Barbadoes there is established the only regular 

 flying-fishery in the world, and in just the manner I 

 have described, except that the boats are considerably 

 larger, is the whole town supplied with delicious fish 

 at so trifling a cost as to make it a staple food among 

 all classes. 



But I find that I am letting this chapter run to an 

 unconscionable length, and it does not appear as if we 

 were getting at the southward very fast either. Truth 

 to tell, our progress was mighty slow ; but we gradually 

 crept across the belt of calms, and a week after our 

 never-to-be-forgotten haul of flying-fish we got the first 

 of the south-east trades, and went away south at a 

 good pace — for us. We made the Island of Trinidada 

 with its strange conical-topped pillar, the Ninepin Kock, 

 but did not make a call, as the skipper was beginning 

 to get fidgety at not seeing any whales, and anxious to 

 get down to where he felt reasonably certain of falling 

 in with them. Life had been very monotonous of late, 

 and much as we dreaded still the prospect of whale- 

 fighting (by " we/' of course, I mean the chaps forward), 



