WHALERS AND WHALING. 



ger seems to be the one which least often overtakes whalemen. 

 And now the tidy ship is in a state of messiness and filth be- 

 yond words to describe. The men are soaked with odorous oil from 

 head to foot, and their faces are so smeared with black from the smoke 

 of the try works, that you can't tell a negro from a white man. The 

 sails are black, the rigging is black, everything reeks with fishy oil ^ 

 and if a man is a genuine whaleman — and has a cast iron stomach — - 

 he loves it and glories in it. 



All this time the ship is surrounded by flocks of sea gulls r 

 petrels, and magnificent swanlike albatrosses, screaming and fighting 

 each other for fragments of the feast, which they devour with a vo- 

 racious greed that seems altogether out of keeping with such beautiful,, 

 graceful creatures. (Like a pretty woman eating too eagerly.) They 

 say these birds flock from far and near, no matter if the carcass be 

 a thousand miles from land. 



53 



