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The whaleman in the Pacific sees very strange and wondrous sights; and never, since Herman Melville wrote his strangely exciting and weird book, 'The Whale, nearly fifty years ago, has any writer given us such a vivid and true picture of whaling life and incident as Mr Frank T. Bullen in his 'Cruise of the Cachalot published this year.
"For years," said he, "I have been like Pyramus, peeking and scratching at a wall for Thisbe, only my Thisbe was never there." But Pyramus Blake had found his mate, he swore, and with huge delight he began devoting hours to chat with Mrs. Whaling. She was old enough to be his mother, though she thought the fact was known to but few.
The captain had also engaged an elderly seaman of his acquaintance out of pure philanthropy, as we all thought, since he was in a state of semi-starvation ashore to act as a kind of sailing-master, so as to relieve the captain of ship duty at whaling time, allowing him still to head his boat.
Wal, Bridget was the first one that I sneaked in upon. I heard a thumping noise as I drew near, as though something was tumbling about the floor, and when I peeped through the door, I saw that Bridget and her mother was having a delightful love-pat. They was banging and whaling each other round the room, and, as the old lady had her muscle well up, it was hard to tell which was coming out ahead.
Having secured the detail which kept him at the post while the regiment was out roughing it, he relaxed the assiduity of his attentions to Mrs. Whaling, but kept up his hand with the old colonel through the medium of pool and billiards, though he lost less frequently.
When the schooner reached Honolulu, he, a mere wreck, physically and mentally, of his former self, had been carried ashore to the hospital, and was making a slow recovery, when the Sydney whaling brig, Wild Wave came into port with some of her crew injured by a boat accident.
Of course the home conditions created by this almost universal masculine employment were curious. The whaling towns were populated by women, children, and old men. The talk of the street was of big catches and the prices of oil and bone.
Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and finally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or smaller harbor trade for his support.
She now lay in Whaling Bight, being about to load anew with oil that had been taken during her absence. Saunders was as busy as a bee; and Mrs. Saunders, who had come across from her own residence on the Peak, in order to remain as long as possible with her husband, was as happy as the day was long; seeming never to tire of exhibiting her presents to the other women at the Bight.
NO DIGNITY IN WHALING? The dignity of our calling the very heavens attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that man more honourable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
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