"Waal," said Farmer Joe, "she dew look right peert. But all the same I don't see no use o' wastin' a whole dog-watch a-lookin' at her."
"Who arst yer to?" said another sailor.
"Waal," continued Farmer Joe, "what I'm a-thinkin' of is that Handsome ort to tell us some more o' his whalin' exper'ences."
Handsome uttered a feeble moan of protest. But the seamen gathered around him and persisted.
"Well, well," he said at length, "hold on a minute till I overhaul my recollection-lockers. Let's see; where was I? Oh yes; I'd got to where I was lost from the Ellen Burgee, and was picked up by the whaler Two Cousins. Well, that was a rum sort of a go. You see the Captain of the Two Cousins was very glad to get us, because he was short-handed, some of his men having deserted at the last port. So we agreed to work in with his crew until our own ship was sighted, when he was to put us aboard of her. Of course we never had any sort of a notion that it was going to be six months before we got back to the Ellen Burgee. Say, of all the wearing, tearing things that can come to a man in this world there's nothing more exasperating than waiting for whales. We pretty nearly went crazy aboard the Two Cousins, for it was two weeks before the masthead let go the mighty welcome yell,
"'There she breaches!'
"The skipper he jumped into the rigging and took a squint, and the next minute he shouted:
"'There she blows—one—two—three! Three good whales. Lower away lively, you shipkeepers!'
"Our crew had been put in one boat, because the Captain agreed that we'd do better working together, and of course he knew we wouldn't run away, because there wasn't any place to run to. Well, we lowered away and off we went under oars, because the whales were dead to windward, and not so very far away either. We had gone about half the distance, when the boat-steerer said,
"'There goes flukes.'