l60 THE WHALE HUNTERS 



the roaring log fire was Carl's son and his blue eyes 

 watched intently as the rough hands of the farmer whale- 

 man replaced the contents of the chest. 



'Are they very old, Grandpa, those books ?' he asked. 



*Yes, Hans, they are indeed,' replied Peter, his grizzled 

 features lighting with pleasure at the boy's interest. 

 'They are the diaries written by our whalemen ancestors 

 on my grandmother's side; she came from Scotland but 

 was American by birth. A lad named Jonathan Oakley 

 wrote the first of these when he was the same age as you 

 and the other set was written by Thomas Oakley who was 

 my great-grandfather.' 



'Yes, I've heard father talk of them and know a good 

 deal about them, already,' said Hans. 'And all those 

 papers and letters, some of those are in English too, aren't 

 they?' he asked. 



'Yes,' replied his grandfather, but all the recent ones 

 are in our own Norwegian.' 



'How did the EngHsh diaries come to be in this farm in 

 the Westfold ?' the boy asked, looked very serious. 



'That, Hans, was something that I wanted to discover 

 for certain when I started delving into this old chest a 

 few weeks ago. It makes quite a tale. Let me put 

 another log on the fire and I'll tell you about it — if you're 

 interested, that is.' 



'Of course I am. Grandpa,' said the boy eagerly as he 

 watched Peter put the log on the fire and then sit back 

 and light his stubby pipe. 



'Thomas Oakley,' began Peter, 'started his diary as a 

 young man when his mother presented him with the one 

 written by Jonathan. His home, as you may know, was 

 in Nantucket in America and his fortunes first thrived 

 and then dwindled as the sperm whaling industry of that 

 once prosperous little island fell into decline. From about 

 1850 kerosene began to replace sperm oil as a means of 

 lighting streets and houses and by 1870 the ships that 



