The water was smooth
as a mill-pond, though the leaden masses of cloud flying overhead
and the muffled roar of the gale told eloquently of the
unpleasant state affairs prevailing outside. Two whale-ships lay
here--the TAMERLANE, of New Bedford, and the CHANCE, of Bluff
Harbour. I am bound to confess that there was a great difference
is appearance between the Yankee and the colonial--very much in
favour of the former. She was neat, smart, and seaworthy,
looking as if just launched; but the CHANCE looked like some poor
old relic of a bygone day, whose owners, unable to sell her, and
too poor to keep her in repair, were just letting her go while
keeping up the insurance, praying fervently each day that she
might come to grief, and bring them a little profit at last.
But although it is much safer to trust appearances in ships than
in men, any one who summed up the CHANCE from her generally
outworn and poverty-stricken looks would have been, as I was,
"way off." Old she was, with an indefinite antiquity, carelessly
rigged, and vilely unkempt as to her gear, while outside she did
not seem to have had a coat of paint for a generation. She
looked what she really was--the sole survivor of the once great
whaling industry of New Zealand.
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