A Year with a Whaler

by Walter Noble Burns

The Lip of a Bowhead Whale

Sailors:

"Blow, my bully boys, blow."

Gabriel:

"And what do you think they had for supper?
Old hard tack and Yankee leather.
Then blow, my boys, for better weather.
Blow, my boys, I love to hear you."

Sailors:

"Blow, my bully boys, blow."

So with a heave and a song we soon had our whale stowed, bone and blubber, below hatches. The Reindeer and the Helen Marr had drifted far away from us by the time our work was finished, but they were still in sight and their try-works smoking. Our whale yielded 1,800 pounds of bone.