and it is probable that another decade will witness the final
extinction of what was once one of the most important maritime
industries in the world.


*

THE CRUISE OF THE "CACHALOT"

*


CHAPTER I

OUTWARD BOUND

At the age of eighteen, after a sea-experience of six years from
the time when I dodged about London streets, a ragged Arab, with
wits sharpened by the constant fight for food, I found myself
roaming the streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts. How I came
to be there, of all places in the world, does not concern this
story at all, so I am not going to trouble my readers with it;
enough to say that I WAS there, and mighty anxious to get away.
Sailor Jack is always hankering for shore when he is at sea, but
when he is "outward bound"--that is, when his money is all gone
--he is like a cat in the rain there.

So as MY money was all gone, I was hungry for a ship; and when a
long, keen-looking man with a goat-like beard, and mouth stained
with dry tobacco-juice, hailed me one afternoon at the street-