330 TEE CRUISE OF THE " CACHALOT." 



every rock and tree in fog or clear, by nigbt or day ; 

 he knew them, one might almost say, as the seal knows 

 them, and feared them as little. His men adored him. 

 They believed him capable of anything in the way of 

 whaling, and would as soon have thought of questioning 

 the reality of daylight as the wisdom of his decisions. 



I went on board the evening of our arrival, hearing 

 some rumours of the doings of the old Chance and 

 her crew, also with the idea that perhaps I might find 

 some countrymen among his very mixed crowd. The 

 first man I spoke to was Whitechapel to the backbone, 

 plainly to be spotted as such as if it had been tattooed 

 on his forehead. Making myself at home with him, 

 I desired to know what brought him so far from the 

 " big smoke," and on board a whaler of all places in the 

 world. He told me he had been a Pickford's van- driver, 

 but had emigrated to New Zealand, finding that he 

 did not at all like himself in the new country. Trying to 

 pick and choose instead of manfully choosing a pick and 

 shovel for a beginning, he got hard up. During one of 

 Captain Gilroy's visits to the Bluff, he came across my 

 ex-drayman, looking hungry and woe-begone. Invited 

 on board to have a feed, he begged to be allowed to 

 remain; nor, although his assistance was not needed, was 

 he refused. " An nar," he said, his face glowing with 

 conscious pride, " y'ort ter see me in a bloomin' bowt. 

 I ain't a-gowin' ter say as I kin fling wun o' them 'ere 

 bloomin' 'arpoones like ar bowt-steerers kin ; but I kin 

 do my bit o' grawft wiv enny on 'em — don'tchu make no 

 bloomin' herror." The glorious incongruity of the thing 

 tickled me immensely ; but I laughed more heartily 

 still when on going below I was hailed as " Wot cher, 

 chummy ; 'ow yer hoppin' up ? " by another barbarian 

 from the wilds of Spitalfields, who, from the secure 



