40 THE WHALE HUNTERS 



share of whatever profits might be made from the voyage. 

 Jonathan, as cabin boy, received a mere i /150th lay but 

 Joseph, being old enough to sign as able seaman was 

 allotted a i/75th lay, whilst Chimoo, as harpooner, or 

 boatheader as this rank was sometimes called, received 

 the princely lay of i/50th. The carpenter and the 

 cooper also received lays of i/50th and the *short lays' 

 ranging from i/25th up to i/8th went to the three mates 

 and the captain. In this case the captain also drew 

 extra share as one of the four owners. 



An advance of money was made to each man for the 

 purchasing of personal equipment and then with a last 

 word from the captain that every man was to be on board 

 to make sail at dawn to-morrow the meeting broke up. 



The boys did not follow the rest of the crew ashore. 

 This was their first ship and the purchases could wait 

 while they proudly looked over her. 



She was a sixty tonner as Mr. Mather had said and 

 straight from the builder's yard. Already they had looked 

 at her from the wharf. With her broad beam and bluff 

 bows, her low freeboard and raised poop-deck, and her 

 single mast and fore-and-aft rig she looked not unhke a 

 smaller version of the Dutch ships that had been seen to 

 visit those shores, and which the marine painter Van de 

 Velde was so fond of portraying. She was typical of the 

 many sloops seen along the New England shores of that 

 day. Their small drafts enabled them to enter the shallow 

 bays and harbours whilst their fore-and-aft rig made them 

 fast and easy to handle. 



All this they had observed before boarding the ship and 

 now they began an inspection of the main deck. 



The objects which attracted the boys' interest most 

 were the two whaleboats that lay in their chocks on the 

 midships deck. In contrast to the bluff sturdiness of 

 their mother ship these boats were long and narrow and 

 lightly constructed of thin cedar planking on finely cut 



