Our two Sea Lions met with no adventures worthy of record, until they got well to the southward of the equator.  They had been unusually successful in getting through the calm latitudes; and forty-six days from Montauk, they spoke a Sag Harbour whaler, homeward bound, that had come out from Rio only the preceding week, where she had been to dispose of her oil.  By this ship, letters were sent home; and as Gardiner could now tell the deacon that he should touch at Rio even before the time first anticipated, he believed that he should set the old man’s heart at peace.  A little occurrence that took place the very day they parted with the whaler, added to the pleasure this opportunity of communicating with the owner had afforded.  As the schooners were moving on in company, about a cable’s length asunder, Hazard saw a sudden and extraordinary movement on board the Vineyard Lion, as the men now named that vessel, to distinguish her from her consort.

“Look out for a spout!” shouted the mate to Stimson, who happened to be on the foretopsail-yard at work; when this unexpected interruption to the quiet of the passage occurred.  “There is a man overboard from the other schooner, or they see a spout.”

“A spout! a spout!” shouted Stimson, in return; “and a spalm (sperm, or spermaceti, was meant) whale, in the bargain!  Here he is, sir, two p’ints on our weather beam.”

This was enough.  If any one has had the misfortune to be in a coach drawn by four horses, when a sudden fright starts them off at speed, he can form a pretty accurate notion of the movement that now took place on board of Deacon Pratt’s craft.  Every one seemed to spring into activity, as if a single will directed a common set of muscles.  Those who were below literally “tumbled up,” as seamen express it, and those who were aloft slid down to the deck like flashes of lightning.  Captain Gardiner sprang out of his cabin, seemingly at a single bound; at another, he was in the whale-boat that Hazard was in the very act of lowering into the water, as the schooner rounded-to.  Perceiving himself anticipated here, the mate turned to the boat on the other quarter, and was in her, and in the water, almost as soon as his commanding officer.

Although neither of the schooners was thoroughly fitted for a whaler, each had lines, lances, harpoons, &c., in readiness in their quarter-boats, prepared for any turn of luck like this which now offered.  The process of paddling up to whales, which is now so common in the American ships, was then very little or not at all resorted to.  It is said that the animals have got to be so shy, in consequence of being so much pursued, that the old mode of approaching them will not suffice, and that it now requires much more care and far more art to take one of these creatures, than it did thirty years since.  On this part of the subject, we merely repeat what we hear, though we think we can see an advantage in the use of the