Bailing Case • [88]
Harpooning Porpoise • [122]
Lowering Boats • [194]
The Mate • [280]
A Nantucket Sleigh-Ride • [310]
SHE BLOWS!
CHAPTER I
I am nearing the evening of life. Many people think of me, I know, as a man who has attained to as much as one can reasonably hope for in this life—if they think of me at all. It is not so much, after all. The things I have aimed for and missed seem, at times, much more important than those I have had. But I put this thought by. Youth expects a good deal; and when one is young—and for a long time after; indeed, until a man is old—he finds hope at the bottom of the cup, enough of it to drown the taste of the bitter draught he has taken. I have evolved the theory that a man is old only when, the cup drained, there is no hope left in it. Thank God, I have not yet reached that point.
But I am inclined to reminiscence, and it scares me somewhat, for proneness to reminiscence is a symptom of age. I know that well, and garrulity is its sister. I am going to give my inclination to reminiscence play in writing of an experience of my youth. It may help to prevent me from boring my friends, and if you find this narrative becoming tedious, nothing is easier than to put the book down.
I was born in New Bedford, on Mill Street, in 1857. My father was Timothy Taycox, a ship carpenter, and a good one; a great whacking man, with a pleasant face and the neck of a bull. My mother was—well, she was my mother. I remember her always as kind and loving, and, indeed, so was my father; but my mother—well, I cannot seem to get beyond that—she was my mother. I must have tried her greatly and often, but she never failed me, and I worshipped her, so far as it is in a boy who is healthy and strong and a roamer by nature. I had two brothers, one older and one younger than myself. I might make a history of my relations with my brothers, especially the older, who used to pick upon me shamefully as long as I was unable to hold my own, but that is none of my purpose.