oats winding down to the sea, in a
ravine; and presently, a signal: a tattered flag upon a summit beyond.
Well knowing, however, that there was nobody on the island but two or
three noose-fulls of runaway convicts from Chili, our captain had no
mind to comply with their invitation to land. Though, haply, he may
have erred in not sending a boat off with his card.

A few days more and we "took the trades." Like favors snappishly
conferred, they came to us, as is often the case, in a very sharp
squall; the shock of which carried away one of our spars; also our
fat old cook off his legs; depositing him plump in the scuppers to
leeward.

In good time making the desired longitude upon the equator, a few
leagues west of the Gallipagos, we spent several weeks chassezing
across the Line, to and fro, in unavailing search for our prey. For
some of their hunters believe, that whales, like the silver ore in
Peru, run in veins through the ocean. So, day after day, daily; and
week after week, weekly, we traversed the self-same longitudinal
intersection of the self-same Line; till we were almost ready to
swear that we felt the ship strike every time her keel crossed
that imaginary locality.

At length, dead before the equatorial breeze, we threaded our way
straight along the very Line itself. Westward sailing; peering right,
and peering left, but seeing naught.

It was during this weary time, that I experienced the first symptoms
of that bitter impatience of our monotonous craft, which ultimately
led to the adventures herein recounted.

But hold you! Not a word against that rare old ship, nor its crew.
The sailors were good fellows all, the half, score of pagans we had
shipped at the islands included. Nevertheless, they were not
precisely to my mind. There was no soul a magnet to mine; none with
whom to mingle sympathies; save in deploring the calms with which we
were now and then overtaken; or in hailing the breeze when it came.
Under other and livelier auspices the tarry knaves might have
developed qualities more attractive. Had we sprung a leak, been
"stove" by a whale, or been blessed with some despot of a captain
against whom to stir up some spirited revolt, these shipmates of mine
might have proved limber lads, and men of mettle. But as it was,
there was naught to strike fire from their steel.

There were other things, also, tending to make my lot on ship-board
very hard to be borne. True, the skipper himself was a trump;