We stood away that night, going under very easy sail. We were in no hurry, and did not want to get far away, but Captain Nelson had a prejudice against whaling in too much company. I was out at daybreak, eager and excited, and stayed out all day when my duties did not call me below. Much of the time I spent in the maintop, which I attained for the first time, my heart in my mouth as I crawled slowly and carefully up and out on the futtock shrouds. Nothing would have induced me to go through the lubber-hole. I had with me my battered old glass—a load of junk, but it was better than nothing—and I squatted there and watched for those drifting white plumes until my eyes ached and watered. Peter laughed at me once when I came down, but I went up again. We sighted no whales that first day, although we expected to see them, and kept a sharp lookout; but the next day, having laid a course almost due south, and being then in about the latitude of Frying Pan Shoals, we raised some. I was in the maintop again, looking through my glass at the wrong place, of course. I should have done better without the glass. At the mastheads we had two Kanakas, one called the Admiral, I never could learn why. He had the most wonderful way of crying “Bl-o-ows!” that I ever heard. The cry began on a very high and piercing falsetto, sank a little in pitch, quavered and trilled for a long time, then went up again like a bugle, and ended as clear as a bell. I wonder that it did not scare all the whales within four miles, but the whales seemed to like it. As I sat with my eyes glued to the glass I heard the Admiral’s cry begin. It startled me, for I had never {54} heard it before, and I almost dropped the glass. I got it through my head what it was long before the Admiral had finished. “Oh, where?” I cried. “Where are they?” The Admiral paid no attention to me, of course, and the other Kanaka in his hoops took up the cry in the usual melodious fashion. Then I saw the white plumes for which I had been looking for a day and a half. They were directly to leeward, and about three miles off. I found them with the glass, and I remember that I was perfectly entranced with watching them. I could not see the bodies of the whales at that distance, and not much more than the hump shows above water, anyway, when the whales are undisturbed; but the spouts arose, at intervals, in a leisurely sort of way, much like the occasional spurt of steam from the stack of a locomotive at rest at a station. The spout of the sperm whale does not go straight up, but forward at an angle. And as the spouts rose, they went more slowly yet, and they spread out and drifted slowly for a moment, perfect plumes, and vanished.