"What made you run away from the Cambridge?"
"O, me and the old man had a row. Besides, I had been eight months in her, and that's long enough to be in one craft. I'd like to see the——hooker that would keep me a year."
The speaker prefixed to the word hooker a sanguinary adjective, which is not applicable to ships except after a hard-fought action.
"Do you expect to stay out the voyage in that hooker?" inquired the beach-comber.
"Yes," said I, "I think I shall. I've been well used so far, and have nothing to complain of. I don't see any reason to leave the ship, with the chance of getting into a worse one."
"Ah, my lad, you're green yet. Wait awhile till you've seen more service, and you'll get tired of staying so long in one craft. I say, shift about and go by the cruise. Six months is plenty long enough in one hooker."
Some of the green hands were swallowing this kind of poison by wholesale; each one listening to a yarn of how the narrator had humbugged a shipping master, or bullied an American "counsle," or knocked over an officer of a ship in the discharge of his duty. The pleasures of a drunken spree and row with the police of a foreign port were duly set forth, and the peculiar delights of life in a calaboose depicted in glowing colors. But this species of conversation flagged after a time. The Mandarins boasted no musical instrument; but that curse and abomination of the forecastle, a greasy pack of cards, was produced, and furnished pastime for a small knot in one corner for a short time.
Dan and "Shorty," the two "voyagers," brought up from the depths of their chests some canes, busks, and other fancy articles or "scrimshonting," as it is termed by whalers, ingeniously fabricated from whales' teeth and jaw bones, some of which they were willing to exchange for tobacco, the principal necessary of life among seamen on long voyages, and their universal circulating medium and standard of value. An article of traffic at sea, instead of being estimated at so many dollars and cents, is rated at so many pounds of tobacco; a thing which is nearly worthless is "not worth a chaw of tobacco;" a disputed question is generally settled by betting a certain quantity of tobacco, and a notorious romancer is often interrupted in the midst of a thrilling story, with the inquiry, "How much tobacco have you got?" meaning, "How much can you give us to believe it? We'll believe anything, if you've got tobacco enough to put it through."
And yet, through all the rough entertainment there shone a vein of politeness and deference to their guests, a certain delicacy which never deserts the sailor, and which might be studied with profit by many accustomed to the most courtly circles. A man who should overstep certain bounds in his intercourse with visitors from a strange ship, or be guilty of the slightest breach of a certain etiquette, not defined by Chesterfield's laws, but natural and of spontaneous growth, as it were, would be taken to task unmercifully by his shipmates; and slights which would pass current in a fashionable evening party, with both nobs and snobs, would never be overlooked in a whalemen's "gam."