"I've never read anything that equals it in its deep-sea wonder and mystery....I congratulate you most heartily." -Rudyard Kipling

Frank Thomas Bullen was a 19th century sailor turned whaler who gives a graphic picture of life in a hard and dangerous business conducted with little regard for life and limb, nature or the peoples encountered by those involved in making a living at a time and in a place where it was work or starve, sink or swim, dog eat dog, every man for himself and the devil takes the hindmost. This is the ultimate whaling narrative, as told by the first mate on the Cachalot.