It was on October tenth that we broke out the Stars and Stripes at our main gaff and squared our yards for home. Everybody cheered as the flag went fluttering up, for everybody was glad that the end of the long, hard voyage was in sight. Behring Straits which when we were about to enter the Arctic Ocean—sea of tragedy and of so many brave men and tall ships—had looked like the portals of , now when we were homeward bound seemed like the to the Happy .  
The four whales we had captured on the voyage had averaged about 1,800 pounds of , which that year was quoted at $6.50 a pound. We had tried out all our whales except the last one and our casks were filled with oil. Our entire catch was worth over $50,000. The officers and boatsteerers made a pretty penny out of the voyage. The captain, I was told, had shipped on a lay of one-sixth—and got it. The sailors had shipped on the 190th lay—and didn't get it. That was the difference. At San Francisco, the forecastle hands were paid off with the "big iron dollar" of whaling tradition.
 
The homeward voyage was not a time of idleness. We were kept busy a large part of the time cleaning the bone of our last three whales—the bone from our first whale had been shipped to San Francisco from Unalaska. As we had at first stowed it away, the baleen was in bunches of ten or a dozen held together at the roots by "white horse," which is the whaler name for the gums of the whale. These bunches were now brought up on deck and each of baleen was cut out of the gums separately and washed and with cocoanut rind for the purpose in the Hawaiian Islands. Then the slabs were dried and polished until they shone like gun metal, tied into bales, and stowed under hatches once more.
 
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