the blubber was tried out.  Casks were also brought in the sloop, and, when the work was done, it was found that that single whale yielded one hundred and eleven barrels of oil, of which thirty-three barrels were head-matter!  This was a capital commencement for the new trade, and Betts conveyed the whole of his prize to the Reef, where the oil was started into the ground-tier of the Rancocus, the casks of which were newly repaired, and ready stowed to receive it.

A week later, as the governor in the Mermaid, cruising in company with the Henlopen and Abraham, was looking out for whales about a hundred miles to windward of the Peak, having met with no success, he was again joined by Betts in the Martha.  Everything was reported right at the Reef.  The Neshamony had come in for provisions and gone out again, and the Rancocus would stand up without watching, with her hundred and eleven barrels of oil in her lower hold.  The governor expressed his sense of Betts’ services, and reminding him of his old faculty of seeing farther and truer than most on board, he asked him to go up into the brig’s cross-trees and take a look for whales.  The keen-eyed fellow had not been aloft ten minutes, before the cry of “spouts—­spouts!” was ringing through the vessel.  The proper signal was made to the Henlopen and Abraham, when everybody made sail in the necessary direction.  By sunset a great number of whales were fallen in with, and as Capt.  Walker gave it as his opinion they were feeding in that place, no attempt was made on them until morning.  The next day, however, with the return of light, six boats were in the water, and palling off towards the game.

On this occasion, Walker led on, as became his rank and experience.  In less than an hour he was fast to a very large whale, a brother of that taken by Betts; and the females had the exciting spectacle, of a boat towed by an enormous fish, at a rate of no less than twenty knots in an hour.  It is the practice among whalers for the vessel to keep working to windward, while the game is taking, in order to be in the most favourable position to close with the boats, after the whale is killed.  So long, however, as the creature has life in it, it would be folly to aim at any other object than getting to windward, for the fish may be here at one moment, and a league off in a few minutes more.  Sometimes, the alarmed animal goes fairly out of sight of the vessel, running in a straight line some fifteen or twenty miles, when the alternatives are to run the chances of missing the ship altogether, or to cut from the whale.  By doing the last not only is a harpoon lost, but often several hundred fathoms of line; and it not unfrequently happens that whales are killed with harpoons in them, left by former assailants, and dragging after them a hundred, or two, fathoms of line.