Viewing page 78 of 106

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[underlined]] 75 [[/underlined]]

Now under water shooting by
Now briskly leaping from it,
Our Sailors soon with barbed Harpoon
Completed their preparation
To pay these new aquatic friends
A mornings salutation.
In vain the creature struggling tries
To quit the scene of Slaughter.
A dozen hands a bow-line seize
And lift him from the water.
Three several times a writhing fish
Was thus in air suspended
When breaking from the iron fluke
He down again descended.
But spreading round a bloody wake
Worse fate was soon to meet him.
For when a wound a Porpose gets
They say, his comrades eat him.
Thus it happens oft among
Perambulating Fishes
Where crafty Slander, when with ease
Like men, to carry out their wishes
A character has but to wound
With her unerring hatchet,
And Porpose-like, the world around
Fall on, and soon dispatch it

Wednesday Augt 1st '49 Clear and light wind from the North East. our passage from the last Port. has been protracted to a now tedious length, by a too constant succession of calms. The passengers have been denied access to the Mate's Log Book since they were put upon an allowance of water. before we could at any time go and see for ourselves the exact Lattitude and Longitude we were in, and indulge a little in speculation