“Hallo! Bob,” (my name is Bob Ledbury, you see). “Hallo! Bob, wot’s the matter?”
To which I reply, “Tom, can it all be true?”
“Can wot be true?” says he, with a stare of surprise—for Tom is getting into his dotage now.
And then I chuckle and tell him I was only thinking of old times, and so he falls to smoking again, and I to staring at the fire, and thinking as hard as ever.
The way in which I was first led to go after the whales was curious. This is how it happened.
About forty years ago, when I was a boy of nearly fifteen years of age, I lived with my mother in one of the seaport towns of England. There was great distress in the town at that time, and many of the hands were out of work. My employer, a blacksmith, had just died, and for more than six weeks I had not been able to get employment or to earn a farthing. This caused me great distress, for my father had died without leaving a penny in the world, and my mother depended on me entirely. The money I had saved out of my wages was soon spent, and one morning when I sat down to breakfast, my mother looked across the table and said, in a thoughtful voice—
“Robert, dear, this meal has cost us our last halfpenny.”
My mother was old and frail, and her voice very gentle; she was the most trustful, uncomplaining woman I ever knew.
I looked up quickly into her face as she spoke. “All the money gone, mother?”
“Ay, all. It will be hard for you to go without your dinner, Robert, dear.”