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"There was a woman in our aft-scuppers when I went a-whalin in the little 'Grampus' and Lord love you, Pumpo, you poor land-swab, she WAS as pretty a craft as ever dowsed a tarpauling there was a woman on board the 'Grampus, who before we'd struck our first fish, or biled our first blubber, set the whole crew in a mutiny.
But before her husband could answer her, Captain Hubbell lifted up his voice, which was full of spirit and enthusiasm. "Messmates!" he cried, "we have touched at the pole, and we have anchored the buoy, and now let us go whalin'. It's thirty years since I saw one of them fish, and I never expected in all my born days I'd go a-whalin'."
I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full not a bed unoccupied. "But avast," he added, tapping his forehead, "you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing." "I thought so. All right; take a seat.
He was a tall, robust specimen of a down-Easter, his open face reddened by long battling with wind and weather, and shaved close except beneath the chin, from which depended an enormous beard that served as a scarf in winter and even now was tucked into his jacket. "It's a curious thing, naow, for the captain and mate of a coaster to be in furrin parts a-whalin'; but we find it pays, eh, Sam?"
Abe was left thar by some home-gyard, I reckon. Well, nobody air ever turned out'n doors in these mountains, as you know, an' Abe got his rights that mawin', an' he's been a-gittin' 'em ever sence. Tom already had a houseful, but 'f any feller got the bigges' hunk o' corn-bread, that feller was Abe; an' ef any feller got a-whalin', hit wasn't Abe.
"I must have got a bit wound up when I saw the foreign gentleman's nose. When I went a-whalin' on the Star of the Sea we had a first mate who could man-handle anybody, but even he would have had to use a belayin' pin to stamp his trade-mark in that shape. Now, the question is could it have been this here Mr. Curtis? It reely is a pity I was so so spry on the door."
"What happened?" "Hed a stout club 'n my hand," said he. "Got holt uv 'is tail, an' begun a-whalin' uv 'im. Run 'im down a steep hill, an' passin' a tree, I tuk one side an' he t' other. We parted there fer the las' time." He looked off at the sky a moment. Then came his inevitable addendum, which was: "I hed a dam sight more tail 'an he did, thet 's sartin."
Samuel Block, he's the last whale in the whole world! Now you know that I wanted to go a-whalin' that's natural enough but since Mr. Gibbs has got through, and has said that I could take this vessel an' go a-whalin' if I wanted to which would be easy enough, for we have got guns aboard which would kill any right-whale I don't want to go.
"But avast," he added, tapping his forehead, "you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better get used to that sort of thing." "I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper? you want supper? Supper'll be ready directly." I sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the Battery.
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