"Thank you, sir."
"Make yourself as comfortable as you can, and will you have a little something to take, to keep the cold out?"
Mr. Ketchum said he would not object to having "a little of something to take," and Uncle Thatcher brought it out of a fence corner, from among the weeds, in a stone jug, with a corn-cob stopper. But Silas's friend from Boston was surprised to find that the jug contained delicious "double-canned" St. Croix rum, old and of magnificent flavor, and very accurately and shrewdly thought to himself, "These beach-combers never paid the duty on liquor like that; smugglers here, I'd bet my life."
He went over and stood near the kettles.
"Was this considered a very large whale?" he asked the man who was stirring the oil.
"Well, pretty fair-sized."
"What do you call pretty fair-sized?"
"Well, a whale eighty feet long is a pretty fair size."
"Was this one eighty feet long?"
"No."