A Cruise in the “Christine.”

The old barque “Othello,” which we used to see in Auckland, was one of George Cook's whaling homes on the deep. At another period he was whaling master on a cruise out of Auckland in the topsail schooner “Christine.” The schooner was an antiquated Danish-built little craft, singularly small for the “blubber-hunting” business. Well I remember her return to the Waitemata after her long cruise off the coast and the Kermadecs. I went aboard to get an account of it. A hard-luck expedition, her owner, Captain Jack McLiver told me. But not until I met “Lonehander” the other day did I learn the true inwardness of that luckless cruise. Taihoa; it is too long, and withal humorous, to tell just now.

But Cook was usually a very lucky man, in whale-hunting; he and his brother Bert were both successful men when they were in such vessels as the “Splendid” and the “Alaska” and “Othello,” and they had the reputation among all the American ships working the South Seas of being smart and lucky officers.