The daybreak of Christmas Day in the year 1879 was fine. The sun began to shine some time about four o'clock over the somber expanse of the southern ocean in the latitude fifty-one; and shortly afterward a sail was sighted ahead. The wind was light, but a heavy swell was running. Presently I wished a Merry Christmas to my captain. He looked still sleepy but amiable. I reported the distant sail to him and ventured the opinion that there was something wrong with her. He said "Wrong?" in an incredulous tone. He took the glasses from me, directed them toward her stripped masts, resembling three Swedish safety -matches flying up and down and wagging to and fro ridiculously in that heaving and austere wilderness of countless water hills, and returned them to me without a word. He only yawned. This marked display of callousness gave me a shock. In those days I was generally inexperienced and still a comparative stranger in that particular region of the world waters.

The captain, as is the captain's way, disappeared from the deck; and after a time our carpenter came up with a small wooden keg of the sort in which certain ship's provisions are packed. I said, surprised, "What do you mean by lugging this thing up here, Chips?" "Captain's orders, Sir" he explained shortly. I did not like to question him further and so we only exchanged Christmas greetings and he went away. The next person to speak to me was the steward. He came running up the companion way stairs: "Have you any old newspapers in your room, sir?" There were several old Sidney Heralds, Telegraphs, and Bulletins in my cabin, besides a few home newspapers received by the last mail. "Why do you ask, steward?" I inquired naturally. "The captain would like to have them," he said.

And even then I did not understand the inwardness of these eccentricities. I was only lost in astonishment at them. It was eight o'clock before we had closed with that ship which was, under her short canvass and heading nowhere in particular, seemed to be loafing aimlessly on the very threshold of the gloomy home of storms. But long before that hour I had learned from the number of boats she carried that this nonchalant ship was a whaler. She was the first whaler I had ever seen. She has hoisted the Stars and Stripes at her peak and her signal-flags had already told us that she was the Alaska. Two years out of New Bedford. Last from Honolulu. Two hundred and fifteen days on the cruising ground. We passed, sailing slowly, within a hundred yards. Of her; and just as our steward started ringing the breakfast bell, the captain and I held aloft, in good view of the figures watching over out stern, the keg, properly headed up and containing besides an enormous bundle of old newspapers, two boxes of figs in the honor of the day. We flung it far over the rail. Instantly our ship sliding down the slope of a high swell left it far behind in our wake. On board the Alaska a man in a fur cap flourished an arm; another, a much bewhiskered person, ran forward suddenly.   I never saw anything so ready and smart as the way that whaler, rolling desperately all the time, lowered one of her boats. The southern ocean went on tossing the two ships like a juggler his gilt balls and the microscopic white spec of the boat seemed to come into the game instantly, as if shot out from a catapult, on the enormous and lonely stage. That Yankee whaler lost not a moment in picking up her Christmas present from the English wool-clipper. Before we had increased the distance very much she dipped her ensign in thanks and to report all well, with a catch of three fish. I suppose it paid them for the two hundred and fifteen days for risk and toil, away from the sounds and sights of the of the inhabited world, like outcasts devoted beyond the confines of mankind's life to some enchanted and lonely penance. 

Whaling Ship Scotia converted for Antarctic Exploration in 1902