There was only one "splicer" on
board, a fine-looking old tar, who was in the bunt of the
fore-topsail. He was probably the only sailor in the ship, before
the mast. The mates, of course, and the boat-steerers, and also two or
three of the crew, had been to sea before, but only whaling voyages;
and the greater part of the crew were raw hands, just from the bush,
as green as cabbages, and had not yet got the hay-seed out of their
heads. The mizen topsail hung in the bunt-lines until everything was
furled forward. Thus a crew of thirty men were half an hour in doing
what would have been done in the Alert with eighteen hands to go
aloft, in fifteen or twenty minutes.
We found they had been at sea six or eight months, and had no news
to tell us; so we left them, and promised to get liberty to come on
board in the evening, for some curiosities, etc. Accordingly, as
soon as we were knocked off in the evening and had got supper, we
obtained leave, took a boat, and went aboard and spent an hour or two.
They gave us pieces of whalebone, and the teeth and other parts of
curious sea animals, and we exchanged books with them- a practice very
common among ships in foreign ports, by which you get rid of the books
you have read and re-read, and a supply of new ones in their stead,
and Jack is not very nice as to their comparative value.
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