Page:Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex.djvu/41

 probably twenty sail. A voyage generally lasts about two years and a half, and with an entire uncertainty of success. Sometimes they are repaid with speedy voyages and profitable cargoes, and at others they drag out a listless and disheartening cruise without scarcely making the expenses of an outfit. The business is considered a very hazardous one, arising from unavoidable accidents, in carrying on an exterminating warfare against those great leviathans of the deep; and indeed a Nantucket man is on all occasions fully sensible of the honor and merit of his profession; no doubt because he knows that his laurels, like the soldier's are plucked from the brink of danger. Numerous anecdotes are related of the whalemen of Nantucket; and stories of hair-breadth 'scapes, and sudden and wonderful preservation are handed down amongst them, with the fidelity, and no doubt many of them with the characteristic fictions of the ancient legendary tales. A spirit of adventure amongst the sons of other relatives of those immediately concerned in it takes possession of their minds at a very early age; captivated with the tough stories of the elder seamen, and seduced as well by the natural desire of seeing foreign countries, as by the