he was an uncommon merchant.  He had been a sealer himself, and finally abandoned mercantile life in Sydney to return to his old haunts, where he managed his own establishment, joined farming to whaling, endowed a mission station,[1] and amazed the land by importing a black-coated tutor and a piano for his children.  Moreover, the harpooners and oarsmen were not paid wages or paid in cash, but merely had a percentage of the value of a catch, and were given that chiefly in goods and rum.  For this their employers charged them, perhaps, five times the prices current in Sydney, and Sydney prices in convict times were not low.  Under this truck system the employers made profits both ways.  The so-called rum was often inferior arrack—­deadliest of spirits—­with which the Sydney of those days poisoned the Pacific.  The men usually began each season with a debauch and ended it with another.  A cask’s head would be knocked out on the beach, and all invited to dip a can into the liquor.  They were commonly in debt and occasionally in delirium.  Yet they deserved to work under a better system, for they were often fine fellows, daring, active, and skilful.  Theirs was no fair-weather trade.  Their working season was in the winter.  Sharp winds and rough seas had to be faced, and when these were contrary it required no small strength to pull their heavy boats against them hour after hour, and mile after mile, to say nothing of the management of the cumbrous steering-oar, twenty-seven feet in length, to handle which the steersman had to stand upright in the stern sheets.

[Footnote 1:  John Jones, of Waikouaiti.  His first missionary found two years at a whaling-station quite enough, if we may judge from his greeting to his successor, which was “Welcome to Purgatory, Brother Creed!” Brother Creed’s response is not recorded.]

The harpooning and lancing of the whale were wild work; and when bones were broken, a surgeon’s aid was not always to be had.  The life, however, could give change, excitement, the chance of profit, and long intervals of comparative freedom.  To share these, seamen deserted their vessels, and free Australians—­nicknamed currency lads—­would ship at Sydney for New Zealand.  Ex-convicts, of course, swelled their ranks, and were not always and altogether bad, despite the convict system.  The discipline in the boats was as strict as on a man-of-war.  On shore, when “trying down” the blubber, the men had to work long and hard.  “Sunday don’t come into this bay!” was the gruff answer once given to a traveller who asked whether the Sabbath was kept.  Otherwise they might lead easy lives.  Each had his hut and his Maori wife, to whom he was sometimes legally married.  Many had gardens, and families of half-caste children, whose strength and beauty were noted by all who saw them.  The whaler’s helpmate had to keep herself and children clean, and the home tidy.  Cleanliness and neatness were insisted on by her master, partly through the seaman’s instinct for tidiness