Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/371

OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 131 breathe his last, before he had time to run any great dis tance. The governor arrived on the spot, just as Bob had got a hawser to the whale and was ready to fill away for the South Cape channel again. The vessels passed each other cheering, and the governor admonished his friend not to carry the carcass too near the dwellings, lest it should render them uninhabitable. But Betts had his an chorage already in his eye, and away he went, with the wind on his quarter, towing his prize at the rate of four or five knots. It may be said, here, that the Martha went into the passage, and that the whale was floated into shallow water, where sinking was out of the question, and Bob and his Kannakas, about twenty in number, went to work to peel off the blubber in a very efficient, though not in a very scientific, or artistical manner. They got the creature stripped of its jacket of fat that very night, and next morn ing the Martha appeared with a set of kettles, in which 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 con veyed 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