Word: whalers
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...Nicol fell in love with a modest, unfortunate girl named Sarah Whitelam, who bore him a son before the twelve-months voyage was over. Determining to take her back to England and marry her as soon as her sentence was served, he got a berth on a whaler, found that he could not return to New South Wales. An escaped convict told him that Sarah had gone to India. He tried to follow her, but was taken first to London, then to China. As he approached his goal, a pressgang from His Majesty's Navy caught...
...pure gold that flows from his tongue sweeter than honey and more pithy than the cedars of Lebanon. Bozo is a character who must be seen to be believed. His mouth may be likened to the Carlsbad caverns and his voice to the fog horn of a Nantucket whaler. And there are innumerable Bozo's in the crowd who take almost childlike delight in bellowing wisecracks at the actors. We must confess that we ourselves were so so carried away by the spirit of the occasion that we emitted a few almost inaudible hisses when the villain...
...safe from one another. Unbridled drinking and mating, suicides, a war between natives and whites, between women and men, left alive one man, a handful of women, 25 children. After that the little colony turned over a new leaf and feared God. They were found by a New Bedford whaler in 1808, were not molested. By 1855 the colony numbered 175 souls. Fearing a water shortage, they persuaded the British Government to move them to a larger island. A few were unhappy there and returned to Pitcairn. There they and their descendants have lived in peace ever since...
Chief Atlao, alias Siwash, was noted for his prowess as a whaler, the claim being asserted that one summer he brought in five of the creatures. He is represented, with full Russian moustachies, as holding a replica of the cedar ball which the chief used in testing out the strength of his tribesmen. When he brought in a whale, the Indians formed a circle around the chief, and he hurled the ball at them. When any brave dropped it, he was "out." The last man remaining got an especially large slice of the catch as prize...
Ambergris has been a puzzle and treasure to the world for centuries. It is mentioned in the Arabian Nights Tales. Medieval Europeans used it in cosmetics, medicines, love potions. When in the 18th Century a whaler found some inside his haul, marvel-lovers still insisted that the whale had simply found and swallowed it. But other whalers discovered it in the intestines of rare sperm whales, usually scrawny specimens, and finally scientists agreed upon its source. No one knows yet, however, whether ambergris floating loose in the sea has been expelled by a live whale or has fallen from...