The whaling season ends at the Azores about the first of October, when the first winter gales begin to blow, and the food becomes scarce. The whales then migrate to other feeding-grounds, and the adventurous whaler follows them. As we were now, in the first days of September, on board the Alabama, the reader will see, that we had but a few weeks left, in which to accomplish our purpose of striking a blow at the enemy's whale fishery. In the afternoon of September 4th, the weather being fine and clear, we made Pico and Fayal, and reducing sail to topsails, lay off and on during the night. The next day, the weather being cloudy, and the wind light from the eastward, we made our first prize, without the excitement of a chase. A ship having been discovered, lying to, with her foretopsail to the mast, we made sail for her, hoisting the United States colors, and approached her within boarding distance, that is to say, within a few hundred yards, without her moving tack or sheet. She had shown the United States colors in return, as we approached, and proved to be a whaler, with a huge whale, which she had recently struck, made fast alongside, and partially hoisted out of the water by her yard tackles. The surprise was perfect and complete, although eleven days had elapsed since the Alabama had been commissioned at a neighboring island, less than a hundred miles off.
The captured ship proved to be the Ocmulgee, of Edgartown, Massachusetts, whose master was a genuine specimen of the Yankee whaling skipper; long and lean, and as elastic, apparently, as the whalebone he dealt in. Nothing could exceed the blank stare of astonishment, that sat on his face, as the change of flags took place on board the Alabama. He had been engaged, up to the last moment, with his men, securing the rich spoil alongside. The whale was a fine ‘sperm,’ and was a ‘big strike,’ and had already been denuded of much of its blubber when we got alongside. He naturally concluded, he said, when he saw the United States colors at our peak, that
