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Imagining that some whaler had anchored in the bay, and being anxious to prevent our underground store from being noticed, we hastily spread the tarpaulins over the hole, so that what we were about could not be observed, and then fired shots in reply. As the parties we had seen gradually approached nearer I recognised one of them with the telescope as being Mr.
Vessels were lading for various home ports, fishing craft were going out on their ventures, even a whaler had just fitted up for a long cruise, and the young as well as middle-aged sailors were shouting out farewells. White and black men were running to and fro, laughing, chaffing, and swearing at each other. There lay the East Indiaman, with her foreign flag as well as that of her country.
Forward was found a number of great casks, such as are used to receive the blubber cut from the whale. "She is a whaler, evidently," exclaimed the captain. In the forecastle there was nothing except some hammocks and a chest or two. "We can get warmer clothing than what we possess, anyhow," remarked the captain. "Now, what's the best thing to do?"
The huge dam seemed to become anxious for the safety of her child, for she was seen to swim eagerly round it, embrace it with her fins, and roll it over in the waves, trying to make it follow her into deep water. But the calf was obstinate; it would not go, and the result was that the boat of a whaler pulled up and harpooned it.
"Not finding a ship at Glasgow to suit my fancy, I went to Liverpool, where I shipped on board a South Sea whaler, called the Diddleus. She was a fine craft, measuring full six hundred tons. I won't tell you just now some of the curious events which occurred before we reached the South Seas. Our success was not very satisfactory.
We gazed at the vessel; we all knew her at a glance, even through the gloom. She was the pirate schooner. On she drove. In another instant she was among the foaming breakers. Her time had come at last. We could hear the shrieks and despairing cries of the wretched men on board. She struck very near the spot where the whaler had been lost. Over the reef she drove.
There was also an Englishman who worked his passage, having been the cooper of a whaler that was wrecked. As Dan McCoy was sent forward, too, this put ten in the forecastle, besides the cook, and left five aft, including the master of another wrecked English vessel, whom we took out as a passenger.
I could scarcely indeed believe that I was not in a dream from which I should awake presently, and discover myself still securely imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages of the powder-blasts, the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in her afloat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as those dusky forms of vapour which had swarmed in giant-shape over my little open boat.
The engine-room, as is usual in vessels of the type of the converted whaler, was as far aft as it could be placed, and the boys noticed with satisfaction as they entered the officers' quarters aft, that the radiators had been connected with the boilers and had warmed the place up to a comfortable temperature.
In size these vessels averaged no more than ninety tons, a fishing smack of today, and yet they battered their way half around the watery globe and comfortably supported six thousand people who dwelt on a sandy island unfit for farming and having no other industries. Every Nantucket lad sailed for his "lay" or share of the catch and aspired to command eventually a whaler of his own.
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