playfulness. Sailing to windward, no gale could bow her over: with
spars erect, she looked right up into the wind's eye, and so she went.

But after all, Little Jule was not to be confided in. Lively enough,
and playful she was, but on that very account the more to be
distrusted. Who knew, but that like some vivacious old mortal all at
once sinking into a decline, she might, some dark night, spring a
leak and carry us all to the bottom. However, she played us no such
ugly trick, and therefore, I wrong Little Jule in supposing it.

She had a free roving commission. According to her papers she might go
whither she pleased--whaling, sealing, or anything else. Sperm
whaling, however, was what she relied upon; though, as yet, only two
fish had been brought alongside.

The day they sailed out of Sydney Heads, the ship's company, all told,
numbered some thirty-two souls; now, they mustered about twenty; the
rest had deserted. Even the three junior mates who had headed the
whaleboats were gone: and of the four harpooners, only one was left,
a wild New Zealander, or "Mowree" as his countrymen are more commonly
called in the Pacific. But this was not all. More than half the
seamen remaining were more or less unwell from a long sojourn in a
dissipated port; some of them wholly unfit for duty, one or two
dangerously ill, and the rest managing to stand their watch though
they could do but little.

The captain was a young cockney, who, a few years before, had
emigrated to Australia, and, by some favouritism or other, had
procured the command of the vessel, though in no wise competent.
He was essentially a landsman, and though a man of education, no more