BRITISH WHALERS. 
429 
July 7. I was awakened from my dreamy sleep to 
receive the visits of a couple of boats that were work- 
ing slowly to us through the floes. An English face — 
two English faces — twelve English faces : what a hap- 
py sight ! We had had no one but ourselves to speak 
our own tongue to for three hundred days, and were 
as glad to listen to it as if we had been serving out 
the time in the penitentiary of silence at Auburn or 
Sing-Sing. Their broad North Briton was music. It 
was not the offensive dialect of the provincial English- 
man, with the affectation of speaking his language 
correctly ; but a strong and manly home-brew of the 
best language in the world for words of sincere and 
hearty good- will. They had to turn up their noses 
at our seal's-liver breakfast ; but, when they heard of 
our winter trials, they stuffed down the seal without 
tasting it. I felt sorry after they were off, that I had 
not taken their names down every one. 
The whaling vessels to which they returned were 
in the freer water outside the shore stream, the Jane 
O'Boness, Captain John Walker; and the Pacific, Cap- 
tain Patterson. These gentlemen boarded us as soon 
as we got through the ice to them. They thought our 
escape miraculous ; and it was some time before they 
found words to congratulate us. " Augh !" and " Won- 
derful !" with a peculiar interchange of looks, was all 
they said. 
These burned children dread the fire; and their 
conversation opened our eyes to dangers we had gone 
through half unconsciously. Few masters in the 
whaling trade but have at some time suffered wreck. 
Two seasons ago, this veteran Patterson saw his ship 
thrust bodily through another, and then the transfix- 
ed and transfixing vessels were both eaten up together 
