"Must have been pleasant," I muttered, half asleep.
"Pleasant! yes. Plenty to eat, and nothing to do but wear round now and then. The worst of it was, the ship was so crank we had to travel on our ankles altogether, and when it did moderate, we'd lost the power of using our feet like human—"
I was by this time fast locked, and I presume that my snoring reminded the inveterate yarn-spinner that he might as well follow suit as to waste his breath.
His predictions proved more reliable that his narratives; for when our watch turned out, the ship was under double reefs with the wind at south-west, and squally. There was nothing to do, however, unless it "breezed on" harder. So, after seeing that the watch were all within call and the lookout set, we made ourselves comfortable under the hurricane house for the new ship boasted that appendage among her modern improvements.
"When I first went to sea," said Father Grafton, "we would have laughed at the notion of building such a covering as this, as we would at many other things which are now quite common, and which, a few years hence, will be looked upon as necessary. There's the patent windlass: it's the first one that I have been shipmate with, but I suppose after I have been this voyage, I should hardly know how to go to sea again with an old-fashioned back-breaker. Why, on my first voyage, we didn't even have purchase bars at the windlass ends; nothing but the handspikes, and it was heave, Dick, and heave, Tom, for I hove last."
"And yet you used to get large whales and cut them in," said Mr. Bunker.
"Yes, that's true. Some people will tell you that they did it as quickly and as easily then as we do nowadays; but I can't confirm that. We used to manage it, after a fashion. It is true enough, there's no knowing what men can do till they are put to it. There is a great deal of nonsense talked by some old-school sailors about the good old fashions and good old days when we made short voyages, and got full ships in almost every instance; and they pretend to say that there were better whalemen in those days than now. But that's all moonshine. There were more whales to be seen, and they were easier struck than now. If we struck one and lost him, why, ten to one, we saw another next day and got him; and so the lost one was forgotten. But now we see them so seldom we can't so well afford to lose one, and, with our improved gear and increased knowledge, it is unreasonable to suppose that we lose as many as our fathers did. I think, if the statistics of voyages could be collected and compared, we should prove that we are better whalemen than they were; that is to say, that we get much more oil in proportion to the opportunities we meet with. I know that such has been the fact in my own experience of twenty-five years."
"You would find it rather hard to make some of the old retired shipmasters believe that," said Mr. Bunker.
"I know it. Some of them have an idea even now, that they could come out with a ship, and turn them up on Peru and Chili just as fast as they used to. And every now and then some heroic old gentleman takes a start, and comes out here to show us how it's done, and goes home again with half a cargo of oil, and a flea in his ear. More than one instance occurs to me at this moment. Whales are not so plenty now that we can practice the game that Cooper tells us about on his first voyage."
"What was that, sir?" I inquired.