The try-works were started again, “trying-out” going on busily all night, watch and watch taking their turn at keeping the pots supplied with minced blubber.  The work was heavy, while the energetic way in which it was carried on made us all glad to take what rest was allowed us, which was scanty enough, as usual.

By nightfall the next day the ship had resumed her normal appearance, and we were a tun and a quarter of oil to the good.  Black Fish oil is of medium quality, but I learned that, according to the rule of “roguery in all trades,” it was the custom to mix quantities such as we had just obtained with better class whale-oil, and thus get a much higher price than it was really worth.

Up till this time we had no sort of an idea as to where our first objective might be, but from scraps of conversation I had overheard among the harpooners, I gathered that we were making for the Cape Verde Islands or the Acores, in the vicinity of which a good number of moderate-sized sperm whales are often to be found.  In fact, these islands have long been a nursery for whale-fishers, because the cachalot loves their steep-to shores, and the hardy natives, whenever and wherever they can muster a boat and a little gear, are always ready to sally forth and attack the unwary whale that ventures within their ken.  Consequently more than half of the total crews of the American whaling fleet are composed of these islanders.  Many of them have risen to the position of captain, and still more are officers and harpooners; but though undoubtedly brave and enterprising, they are cruel and treacherous, and in positions of authority over men of Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon origin, are apt to treat their subordinates with great cruelty.

*

CHAPTER IV

BAD WEATHER

Nautical routine in its essential details is much the same in all ships, whether naval, merchant, or whaling vessels.  But while in the ordinary merchantman there are decidedly “no more cats than can catch mice,” hardly, indeed, sufficient for all the mousing that should be done, in men-of-war and whaleships the number of hands carried, being far more than are wanted for everyday work, must needs be kept at unnecessary duties in order that they may not grow lazy and discontented.

For instance, in the cachalot we carried a crew of thirty-seven all told, of which twenty-four were men before the mast, or common seamen, our tonnage being under 400 tons.  Many a splendid clipper-ship carrying an enormous spread of canvas on four masts, and not overloaded with 2500 tons of cargo on board, carries twenty-eight or thirty all told, or even less than that.  As far as we were concerned, the result of this was that our landsmen got so thoroughly drilled, that within a week of leaving port they hardly knew themselves for the clumsy clodhoppers they at first appeared to be.

We had now been eight days out, and in our leisurely way were making fair progress across the Atlantic, having had nothing, so far, but steady breezes and fine weather.  As it was late autumn the first week in October—­I rather wondered at this, for even in my brief experience I had learned to dread a “fall” voyage across the “Western Ocean.”