Peter was beginning on the sails of the ship. Now, what I knew about a square-rigged vessel was even less than I had known about the matter of lays, and I was feeling ashamed of my ignorance and rather hopeless. But as I looked off at the water, I saw, about two or three miles off, a little feathery puff of vapor rise, like the drooping white ostrich plume on Ann McKim’s hat. The feathery shaft of vapor rose lazily, and the sun shone on it and glorified it for a brief moment, and it drifted off slowly and vanished. And I watched it stupidly, and just as I came to and grasped Peter Bottom’s arm, there floated down to us from aloft a melodious cry. “Bl-o-o-ows! Bl-o-o-ows!” It was most deliberately given, and was a quavering, musical cry, running up and down the scale, much like a yodel. It was one of the black men who gave it. These black men always gave the cry more melodiously than a white man. They had had a man aloft all the afternoon. That cry was music to me, and all the men were interested, especially the green hands, to whom it was as strange as it was to me. Mr. Baker was waving his arms and beckoning, and the crews of the first and second mate’s boats were running, Peter Bottom among the best of them. The boats {34} were still lashed at the davits, but it took only a few seconds to loose them and to begin to lower, two or three of the men in each boat beginning to overhaul the harpoons and lances and other gear. As soon as the boats struck the water, the falls were unhooked, and they pushed off from the side of the ship and lay there while the crew seemed to be busied with something on the thwarts, I could not see what, and the ship was slowly leaving them bobbing and drifting. I was just beginning to wonder about it when I saw that it was the mast and sail they were busy with. The second mate’s boat stepped her mast and spread the sail, but in Mr. Baker’s boat they abandoned that intention, and began rowing, while the ship kept off gradually on the same course as the boats. By the time we had made our course Mr. Baker’s boat was well ahead and going strong, the five long oars dipping slowly and with a fair regularity, but with some splashing from the green hands. It occurs to me to say something about a whaleboat for the benefit of those who do not know the boats, and they must be many, for the whaleboat, especially the boat fully equipped for chasing whales, has become a very unfamiliar sight.