I went on board the evening of, our arrival, hearing some rumours
of the doings of the old CHANCE and her crew, also with the idea
that perhaps I might find some countrymen among his very mixed
crowd. The first man I spoke to was Whitechapel to the backbone,
plainly to be spotted as such as if it had been tattooed on his
forehead. Making myself at home with him, I desired to know what
brought him so far from the "big smoke," and on board a whaler of
all places in the world. He told me he had been a Pickford's
van-driver, but had emigrated to New Zealand, finding that he did
not at all like himself in the new country. Trying to pick and
choose instead of manfully choosing a pick and shovel for a
beginning, he got hard up. During one of Captain Gilroy's visits
to the Bluff, he came across my ex-drayman, looking hungry and
woebegone. Invited on board to have a feed, he begged to be
allowed to remain; nor, although his assistance was not needed,
was he refused. "An nar," he said, his face glowing with
conscious pride, "y'ort ter see me in a bloomin' bowt. I ain't
a-goain' ter say as I kin fling wun o' them 'ere bloomin'
'arpoones like ar bowt-steerers kin; but I kin do my bit o'
grawft wiv enny on 'em--don'tchu make no bloomin' herror.
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