One day I was standing beside the windlass, listening to the conversation of five or six of the men, who were busy sharpening harpoons and cutting-knives, or making all kinds of toys and things out of whales’ bones. We had just finished cutting-in and trying out our third whale, and as it was not long since we reached the fishing-ground, we were in high hopes of making a good thing of it that season; so that every one was in good spirits, from the captain down to the youngest man in the ship.
Tom Lokins was smoking his pipe, and Tom’s pipe was an uncommonly black one, for he smoked it very often. Moreover, Tom’s pipe was uncommonly short, so short that I always wondered how he escaped burning the end of his nose. Indeed, some of the men said that the redness of the end of Tom’s nose was owing to its being baked like a brick by the heat of his pipe. Tom took this pipe from his mouth, and while he was pushing down the tobacco with the end of his little finger, he said—
“D’ye know, lads, I’ve been thinkin’—”
“No, have ye?” cried one of the men, interrupting him with a look of pretended surprise. “Well now, I do think, messmates, that we should ax the mate to make a note o’ that in the log, for it’s not often that Tom Lokins takes to thinkin’.”
There was a laugh at this, but Tom, turning with a look of contempt to the man who interrupted him, replied—
“I’ll tell you wot it is, Bill Blunt, if all the thoughts that you think, and especially the jokes that you utter, wos put down in the log, they’d be so heavy that I do believe they would sink the ship!”
“Well, well,” cried Bill, joining in the laugh against himself, “if they did, your jokes would be so light and triflin’ that I do believe they’d float her again. But what have you been a-thinkin’ of, Tom?”
“I’ve been thinkin’,” said Tom slowly, “that if a whale makes his breakfast entirely off them little things that you can hardly see when you get ’em into a tumbler—I forget how the captain calls ’em—wot a tree-mendous heap of ’em he must eat in the course of a year!”
“Thousands of ’em, I suppose,” said one of the men.
“Thousands!” cried Tom, “I should rather say billions of them.”