"No," replied the captain, "but she has seen whales twice on the passage, and has been fast, and had a boat stove. I saw Captain Worth ashore."
"I have a presentiment," said the mate, "that we shall get a whale yet before we get far from the islands. We shall hardly run Pico out of sight between now and morning, with this little breeze, and we have a promise of a fine whaling day to-morrow."
"The voyage that I was mate of the Colossus," said the captain, "we took two large whales at one fare—more to the westward. We had Flores and Corvo both in sight when we were cutting them. It came on very rugged weather, and we had a hard time saving them. We muckled them after a fashion, but I suppose we lost thirty or forty barrels of oil on the two, and the deficiency, of course, was mostly on the head matter. I know that the oil we shipped home did not bring full price, because there was not the full proportion of head. Ever since that, I always meant to make the full proportion, anyhow," said the captain, with a sly laugh.
"Yes, sir," said Father Grafton. "I don't blame you for that, but it wont do to smuggle too much. Now, when I was on my first voyage, with Hosea Coffin, he used to pile it on rather too steep. He wasn't satisfied with one third head: he was famous for working in the core of the hump, and other fat parts with it; and if we came out with an ullage cask of head on the stowdown, he'd be sure to fill it up with body oil, and scratch a big H. on it. So that we had a large quantity of head oil, but the quality wasn't well up to the standard. Well, when he was going out in the same ship next voyage, 'Cousin Ephraim,' the old Quaker owner, said to him:
"'Hosea, there's one thing I'd advise thee not to do, this voyage.'
"'What's that?' asked Captain Coffin.
"'I think,' said Cousin Ephraim, in his sly, chuckling way, 'thee'd better not cut off thy whale's heads abaft the hump!'"
They both laughed so heartily at this story that I had a quiet laugh, too, in sympathy with them, though I did not then appreciate the point of it as well as I afterwards did.
"There's a deal of sly fun in some of those old Quakers," said Captain Upton. "I recollect when I went down to ship in the Poor Richard, as boatsteerer, 'Uncle Peleg' offered me the eightieth lay, but I struck for the seventieth. I knew I could get it in another ship, though I rather preferred to go in this one for the same lay. So I was as independent as a woodsawyer's clerk, and wouldn't budge tack nor sheet. After chaffering for some time, Uncle Peleg began to scratch the sand with his ivory-headed cane, in a meditative way. Said he: