CHAPTER I.
THE BRIG-SCHOONER "PILGRIM." On February 2, 1876, the schooner "Pilgrim" was in latitude 43 deg.

57' south, and in longitude 165 deg.

19' west of the meridian of Greenwich.
This vessel, of four hundred tons, fitted out at San Francisco for whale-fishing in the southern seas, belonged to James W.Weldon, a rich Californian ship-owner, who had for several years intrusted the command of it to Captain Hull.
The "Pilgrim" was one of the smallest, but one of the best of that flotilla, which James W.Weldon sent each season, not only beyond Behring Strait, as far as the northern seas, but also in the quarters of Tasmania or of Cape Horn, as far as the Antarctic Ocean.

She sailed in a superior manner.

Her very easily managed rigging permitted her to venture, with a few men, in sight of the impenetrable fields of ice of the southern hemisphere.