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Three months after they had drifted ashore, a passing sperm whaler, cruising through the group, took away the two seamen, and then Brantley, after bidding them a silent farewell, had, with bitter despair gnawing at his heart, turned his face away from the ship, and walked back into the palm-shaded village. "I will never go back again," he had said to himself.
Hank, looking over the side, caught sight of the spout and, with a twist of the shoulder, walked aft to the first boat. "I'm going, too," Colin reminded him. The old whaler looked at him thoughtfully and disapprovingly. "Orders is orders," he said at last, "an' if the skipper said you could go, why, I reckon that ends it.
When he and the girl went north to Ellesmere Land in the year of the Wonderful Open Winter, he left the picture-story with Kadlu, who lost it in the shingle when his dog-sleigh broke down one summer on the beach of Lake Netilling at Nikosiring, and there a Lake Inuit found it next spring and sold it to a man at Imigen who was interpreter on a Cumberland Sound whaler, and he sold it to Hans Olsen, who was afterward a quartermaster on board a big steamer that took tourists to the North Cape in Norway.
But all this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless.
But all this is quite different from a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless.
Other ships that arrived during my stay at the Cape were a French 40-gun frigate, an East India ship, and a brig, of the same nation: likewise two other French ships with slaves from the coast of Mozambique bound to the West Indies: a Dutch packet from Europe, after a four months passage: and the Harpy, a South Sea Whaler with 500 barrels of spermaceti, and 400 of seal and other oils.
At the same instant the engine-bell rang and the steering-chains began to rattle furiously on the rollers at her feet as the steam steering-gear did its work. Then came another yell "It's a whaler! no lights!" and an answering shriek of terror from some big black object that loomed ahead.
If the Heroine, from any cause, does not appear, we may hope that a whaler or some other craft may pass by and see our signals. We must keep a look-out on both sides of the island; for though we may be happy enough while we remain here, it won't do to turn altogether into Robinson Crusoes." "Pleasanter than having to keep watch, however," remarked Tom.
"Work is no degradation," he answered hastily, "or my days in the Nantucket whaler might easily rise up in judgment against me; for I am certain there can be no more filthy or disgusting work on the face of the earth than I did then. Perhaps it is better for us that we have had to toil so hard; we shall be better able to sympathize with other workers, and to help them."
When I embarked on board of the whaler, I brought my basket on my arm as usual; but except opening it for my brushes and combs or scissors, I have not examined it for months." "What are brushes and combs and scissors?" "That I will show you," replied she, opening the lid of the basket. "These are the brushes and combs for cleaning the hair, and these are scissors. Now we will take everything out."
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