vagrant lot; capable seamen, indeed, but of the adventurous and irresponsible sort, for service before the mast on a whaler was not eagerly sought by the men of the merchant service.  For a time Indians were plenty, and their fine physique and racial traits made them skillful harpooners.  As they became scarce, negroes began to appear among the whalemen, with now and then a Lascar, a South Sea Islander, Portuguese, and Hawaiians.  The alert New Englanders, trained to the life of the sea, seldom lingered long in the forecastle, but quickly made their way to the posts of command.  There they were despots, for nowhere was the discipline more severe than on whalemen.  The rule was a word and a blow—­and the word was commonly a curse.  The ship was out for a five-years’ cruise, perhaps, and the captain knew that the safety of all depended upon unquestioning obedience to his authority.  Once in a while even the cowed crew would revolt, and infrequent stories of mutiny and murder appear in the record of the whale trade.  The whaler, like a man-of-war, carried a larger crew than was necessary for the work of navigation, and it was necessary to devise work to keep the men employed.  As a result, the ships were kept cleaner than any others in the merchant service, even though the work of trying out the blubber was necessarily productive of smoke, soot, and grease.

As a rule the voyage to the Pacific whaling waters was round Cape Horn, though occasionally a vessel made its way to the eastward and rounded the Cape of Good Hope.  Almost always the world was circumnavigated before return.  In early days the Pacific whalers found their game in plenty along the coast of Chili; but in time they were forced to push further and further north until the Japan Sea and Bering Sea became the favorite fishing places.

The whale was usually first sighted by the lookout in the crow’s nest.  A warm-blooded animal, breathing with lungs, and not with gills, like a fish, the whale is obliged to come to the surface of the water periodically to breathe.  As he does so he exhales the air from his lungs through blow-holes or spiracles at the top of his head; and this warm, moist air, coming thus from his lungs into the cool air, condenses, forming a jet of vapor looking like a fountain, though there is, in fact, no spout of water.  “There she blows!  B-l-o-o-o-ws!  Blo-o-ows!” cries the lookout at this spectacle.  All is activity at once on deck, the captain calling to the lookout for the direction and character of the “pod” or school.  The sperm whale throws his spout forward at an angle, instead of perpendicularly into the air, and hence is easily distinguished from right whales at a distance.  The ship is then headed toward the game, coming to about a mile away.  As the whale, unless alarmed, seldom swims more than two and a half miles an hour, and usually stays below only about forty-five minutes at a time, there is little difficulty in overhauling him.  Then the boats are launched, the captain and a sufficient number of men staying with the ship.