"Black ghost, eh! You know what the pot called the kettle, Jeff? Yah! yah! You aint more'n a half-price nigger, nohow. You wouldn't fetch more'n fifty dollars in Kentucky, if you be big. Sh' think you might be big, too; you eats 'bout six men's allowance. Look o' me, now; I don't eat nothin' hardly."
"You've no business to eat anything. The cook's always 'lowed to live on the smell."
"Smell, eh! 'spects dats de reason dey always ships black man for cook. Carry his own smell wid him eh? Not strong like Samson but like billy-goat. Now, you see, Jeff, you'm strong bofe ways."
"Am I?" said Jeff, seizing the unfortunate doctor by the leg and the back of his neck, and holding him suspended over the whale in his Herculean grasp. "I've a good mind to give you an overboard bunk on this whale, just to show you the difference between a cook's berth and a boatsteerer's."
"O Lord!" gasped the cook, when he was released, and once more found soundings with his feet on the deck, "you'm pretty strong one way, anyhow. Well, now, Jeff, how much did you ever see a whale make?"
"A hund'ed and eighty barrels."
"What! a sparm whale?"
"Didn't say nothin' bout sparm whale. No, a right whale; the first voyage I went on Pattygoney."
"O! I mean a sparm whale."
"Well, I seen one make a hund'ed and fifteen barrels, that's the most. Now, here comes Cooper. Got his pipe loaded, too. I'll bet he's seen bigger one than that. Ask him now."