nate little creatures, one after another, either popped right
into the dolphin's jaws as they lighted on the water, or were snapped
up instantly afterwards.

It was impossible not to take an active part with our pretty little
friends of the weaker side, and accordingly we very speedily had our
revenge. The middies and the sailors, delighted with the chance,
rigged out a dozen or twenty lines from the jib-boom end, and
spritsail yard-arms, with hooks baited merely with bits of tin, the
glitter of which resembles so much that of the body and wings of the
flying-fish, that many a proud dolphin, making sure of a delicious
morsel, leaped in rapture at the deceitful prize.

It may be well to mention that the dolphin of sailors is not the fish
so called by the ancient poets. Ours, which I learn from the
Encyclopaedia, is the _Coryphoena hippurus_ of naturalists, is
totally different from their _Delphinus phocoena_, termed by us the
porpoise, respecting which there exists a popular belief amongst
seamen that the wind may be expected from the quarter to which a shoal
of porpoises are observed to steer. So far, however, from our
respecting the speculations of these submarine philosophers, every art
is used to drag them out of their native element, and to pass them
through the fire to the insatiable Molochs of the lower decks and
cockpits of his Majesty's ships, a race amongst whom the constant
supply of the best provisions appears to produce only an increase of
appetite.

One harpoon, at least, is always kept in readiness for action in the
fore part of the ship. The sharpest and strongest of these deadly
weapons is generally stopped or fastened to the fore-tack bumpkin, a
spar some ten or twelve feet long, projecting from the bows of a ship
on each side like the horns of a snail, to which the tack or lower
corner of the foresail is drawn down when the ship is on a wind. This
spar, which affords good footing, not being raised many feet above the
water, while it is clear of the bow, and very nearly over the spot
where the porpoises glide past, when shooting across the ship's
forefoot, is eagerly occupied by the most active and expert harpooner
on board, as soon as the report has been spread that a shoal, or, as
the sailors call it, a "school" of porpoises, are round the ship.
There is another favourite station which is speedily filled on these
occasions; I mean, alongside of the slight-looking apparatus
projecting perpendicular