Peering out the window, he watched the interminable procession on street and sidewalks. He gazed at the raw, angular buildings—permanent and unalterable. Overhead a Kansas sun shone down upon him—the same which in its gracious bounty shone down upon New York.
Frederick Orin Bartlett.
THE RIGHT WHALE’S FLUKES
’Ware th’ sparm whale’s jaw,
an’ th’ right whale’s flukes!—Old Whaling Maxim.
In the old whaling museum on Johnny Cake Hill there is a big room with a fireplace where, on a rainy or stormy day, the whaling captains like to gather; and when storms or cold keep him from his rocking chair on the after deck of his Fannie, Cap’n Mark Brackett climbs the hill to the old museum and establishes himself in a chair before the fire. From the windows you may look down a short, steep street to the piers where great heaps of empty oil casks, brown with the grime of years of service, block the way. Tied up to the piers there may be an old square-rigger, her top hamper removed, and empty so that she rides high in the water and curtsies to every gust; and you will see squat little auxiliary schooners preparing for the summer’s cruising off Hatteras; and beyond these the eye reaches across the lovely harbor to Fair Haven, gleaming in the sun.
The old museum is rich with the treasures of the sea, and this room where the captains like to gather is the central treasure house. An enormous old secretary of mahogany veneer stands against one wall, and in cases about the room you will find old ship’s papers bearing the names of presidents a hundred years dead, pie crimpers carved from the solid heart of a whale’s tooth, a little chest made by one of the Pitcairn Island mutineers, canes fashioned from a shark’s backbone or the jawbone of the cachalot, enormous old locks, half a dozen careful models of whaling craft with the last rope and spar in place, and the famous English frigate, in its glass case at one side.
I found Cap’n Brackett there one afternoon, in an old chair before the fire, his black pipe humming like a kettle, his stout body relaxed in comfortable ease. He had advised me to read “Moby Dick,” and had loaned me the book; and when I entered, he looked up, a welcoming twinkle in the keen old eyes that lurk behind their ambush of leathery wrinkles, and saw the book in my hand.
“Read it?” he asked, between puffs.
“End to end,” I assured him.
“A great book. A classic, I say.”