14 A YEAR WITH A WHALER 



iron dollar." This fact being discreetly with- 

 held from us, our illusions were not disturbed. 



The fact is the lay " means nothing to sail- 

 ors on a whaler. It is merely a lure for the un- 

 sophisticated. It might as well be the 1000th 

 lay as the 190th, for all the poor devil of a sailor 

 gets. The explanation is simple. The men 

 start the voyage with an insufficient supply of 

 clothing. By the time the vessel strikes cold 

 weather their clothes are worn out and it is a 

 case of buy clothes from the ship's slop-chest at 

 the captain's own prices or freeze. As a conse- 

 quence, the men come back to port with expense 

 accounts standing against them which wipe out 

 all possible profits. This has become so defi- 

 nitely a part of whaling custom that no sailor 

 ever thinks of fighting against it, and it prob- 

 ably would do him no good if he did. As a fore- 

 castle hand's pay the " big iron dollar " is a 

 whaling tradition and as fixed and inevitable as 

 fate. 



The outfitter who owned the store did not 

 conduct a sailor's boarding house, so we were put 

 up at a cheap hotel on Pacific street. After 



