State of the Ship. 147 



having, after he had received four harpoons, chased 

 one of our boats, whose crew had to pull for their 

 lives to escape the terrific blows which were falling 

 from the monster's tail, one blow being quite suffi- 

 cient to entirely demolish a boat. The operation 

 of flinching was not completed until 9"30 a.m., 

 when everyone was sent to bed. After all it makes 

 little difference in these regions what time one 

 retires, day and night are so much alike. 



The state of the ship is now almost indescribable. 

 Cleanliness is decidedly not in the ascendant. 



From the wheel aft to the taffrail, piled up in 

 large stacks as high as the gunwale, is the whale- 

 bone taken from the recently caught fish ; and from 

 the wheel to the mainmast, on each side of the 

 quarter-deck, are between twenty and thirty tons of 

 coal, cleared out of the tanks in order to afford room 

 for the blubber. The only clear, not clean, part of 

 the ship is along each gangway, which must neces- 

 sarily be kept so for the purpose of flinching and 

 making-off. The captain says, "If we get another 

 fish or twa we shall be in a fearsome mess." It 

 seems impossible to be worse than we are. If we 

 get any more fish we shall have to throw some of 

 our coal overboard, as there is certainly no more 

 room for any on our quarter-deck, the only available 

 part of the ship ; even the forehold has been cleared, 

 and coal has been indiscriminately shovelled into 

 the space vacated by the casks of provisions, which 



