CHAPTER XIX.  “S.  V.”

        ChapterXX.  Conclusion.

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DICK SAND

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

The brig-schooner “Pilgrim.”

On February 2, 1876, the schooner “Pilgrim” was in latitude 43 deg. 57’ south, and in longitude 165 deg. 19’ west of the meridian of Greenwich.

This vessel, of four hundred tons, fitted out at San Francisco for whale-fishing in the southern seas, belonged to James W. Weldon, a rich Californian ship-owner, who had for several years intrusted the command of it to Captain Hull.

The “Pilgrim” was one of the smallest, but one of the best of that flotilla, which James W. Weldon sent each season, not only beyond Behring Strait, as far as the northern seas, but also in the quarters of Tasmania or of Cape Horn, as far as the Antarctic Ocean.  She sailed in a superior manner.  Her very easily managed rigging permitted her to venture, with a few men, in sight of the impenetrable fields of ice of the southern hemisphere.  Captain Hull knew how to disentangle himself, as the sailors say, from among those icebergs, which, during the summer, drift by the way of New Zealand or the Cape of Good Hope, under a much lower latitude than that which they reach in the northern seas of the globe.  It is true that only icebergs of small dimensions were found there; they were already worn by collisions, eaten away by the warm waters, and the greater number of them were going to melt in the Pacific or the Atlantic.

Under the command of Captain Hull, a good seaman, and also one of the most skilful harpooners of the flotilla, was a crew composed of five sailors and a novice.  It was a small number for this whale-fishing, which requires a good many persons.  Men are necessary as well for the management of the boats for the attack, as for the cutting up of the captured animals.  But, following the example of certain ship-owners, James W. Weldon found it much more economical to embark at San Francisco only the number of sailors necessary for the management of the vessel.  New Zealand did not lack harpooners, sailors of all nationalities, deserters or others, who sought to be hired for the season, and who followed skilfully the trade of fishermen.  The busy period once over, they were paid, they were put on shore, and they waited till the whalers of the following year should come to claim their services again.  There was obtained by this method better work from the disposable sailors, and a much larger profit derived by their co-operation.

They had worked in this way on board the “Pilgrim.”