248 A YEAR WITH^ A WHALER^ 



the voyage. The captain, I was told, had 

 shipped on a lay of one-sixth — and got it. The 

 sailors had shipped on the 190th lay — and didn't 

 get it. That was the difference. At San Fran- 

 cisco, the forecastle hands were paid off with the 

 " big iron dollar " of whaling tradition. 



The homeward voyage was not a time of idle- 

 ness. We were kept busy a large part of the 

 time cleaning the bone of our last three whales 

 — ^the bone from our first whale had been shipped 

 to San Francisco from Unalaska. As we had 

 at first stowed it away, the baleen was in bunches 

 of ten or a dozen slabs held together at the roots 

 by " white horse," which is the whaler name for 

 the gums of the whale. These bunches were now 

 brought up on deck and each slab of baleen was 

 cut out of the gums separately and washed and 

 scoured with cocoanut rind procured for the 

 purpose in the Hawaiian Islands. Then the 

 slabs were dried and polished until they shone 

 like gun metal, tied into bales, and stowed under 

 hatches once more. 



A little south of King's Island in the northern 

 (end of Behring Sea, Captain Shorey set a course 



