“If we meet a homeward bound sailing vessel in good weather I’ll put you aboard. Steamships won’t stop for you. If you want to join my crew—you’re a husky looking youngster—I’ll fit you out and lot you a greenhorn’s share. Best I can do for you. Is your sloop any good?”
“She’s not started a plank, sir,” I declared.
“Pass the word for the carpenter to take his gang and get the stick out of her, and hoist her aboard,” Captain Rogers said to Gibson. “Then take this lad to breakfast and see that he gets a good one.”
He turned me off rather cavalierly I thought. Of course, my situation appealed more strongly to me than it was likely to appeal to anybody else. But Captain Rogers did not seem to consider my being carried away, willy-nilly, into the Southern Seas, and on a voyage likely to last anywhere from eighteen months to three years—for the Scarboro was just out of New Bedford, as has been stated—the captain did not seem to consider, I say, what my state of mind might be. Of course, I was thankful that I had been picked up; yet if the weather settled I might have safely made my way back home in the Wavecrest. And it was easy to see that the skipper of the Scarboro considered the sloop his property in return for taking me aboard.
The lanky captain of the whale ship was not a person to argue with. I knew it would be useless to bandy words with him. Even his nephew plainly showed that he considered it wise to drop the matter of the dead whale right there and then—before the captain at least. He grumbled a bit about the loss of this first chance for oil when we went to breakfast, however. Apropos of which, and while we discussed the good breakfast that was put before us, Ben Gibson repeated for my delectation the famous whaling story—a classic in its way—wherein the Yankee skipper and the Yankee mate differ as to the advisability of chasing a cachelot. Some version of this tale is known to every whaler and I preserve Ben’s story, as he told it, imitating the Down East twang as well as I may:
“Forty-two days aout, an’ not a drop o’ ile in the tanks. I went for’ard. The lookaout he hailed. ‘On deck, sir,’ says he, ‘thar she blaows.’
“I went aft. ‘Cap’n Symes,’ says I, ‘thar she blaows; shall I lower?’
“Cap’n Symes he gin a look to wind’ard. ‘Mr. Symes,’ says he, (’Twas cur’ous, his name was Cap’n Symes, an’ my name was Mister Symes, but we warn’t neither kith nor kin), ‘Mr. Symes,’ says he, ‘it’s a-bloawin’ right smart peart, an’ I don’t see fitten for to lower.’
“I went for’ard. The lookaout hailed again. ‘On deck, sir,’ says he, ‘thar she blaows an’ spouts.’
“I went aft. ‘Cap’n Symes,’ says I, ‘thar she blaows an’ spouts. Shall I lower?’