Mr. Brown, as I must call him, wandering down upon the Boston wharves, rather desperate, shipped in a fisherman. He had always been used to boats. It was a very short cruise, and upon his return he shipped in a {144} merchantman for the East. On this voyage, as I inferred, he had not abandoned his bad habits, and somehow or other he found himself cast adrift for the second time, and “on the beach” at Batavia. Here he got into some row—a fight, which almost ended him—with his outcast companions, and barely escaped with his life. That seemed to have sobered him. He pulled himself together, and reformed; shipped as foremast hand on a whaler which had put into Batavia short of men, and had followed whaling for the six years since. Now he was thirty-two or thirty-three, quiet and kind and efficient, and he had my unqualified admiration and affection. If I were a second Conrad I would make a book of him. In about latitude 17° S. the southeast trades left us, and the wind came out from the northeast and north, which suited us just as well. We continued on our course for another five days, and then stood in to the westward for Rio. {145} CHAPTER XV We had good weather to the River Plate. Our northeasterly wind continued until we were two days out of Rio, then pulled around into the southwest, and came stronger. There are not many days of calms and variable winds in this part of the ocean, and gales at this season are rare. We were making a course almost due south, and were several hundred miles from the coast. When we arrived off the Plate, early in November, we reduced sail, and cruised to and fro, keeping a sharp lookout for whales. We had seen no birds at all on the Western grounds, and but few on our way down; but here I saw my first albatross, before we had got any whales. The breeze was light, but there was quite a heavy swell rolling from the southwest, and the ship, under easy sail, was barely moving through the water. I happened to have—or to be taking—a brief rest from my duties, as I was very apt to do. Probably I had been sent on some errand, and, boylike, I was performing it by standing at the rail near the windlass, looking out over the heaving sea, and dreaming my dreams, when I saw, far ahead of us, a white speck on the water. The white speck would rise slowly, as the great rollers advanced, until it was on the top of one of them; then, with the passage of the swell, it would fall as slowly, until it was hidden in the valley. I had the old glass hung about my neck in case we should raise a spout. All the officers used to laugh at me for carrying that jangling load of junk, but I did not care for their laughter, and I was glad that I had it then, for I could not have gone after it.