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Updated: June 6, 2025
At length, the specksioneer, or chief harpooner, having spent sufficient time in indulgence and equipment, with an air of importance and self-confidence, proceeded on deck, and naturally turned to look on the whale. To his astonishment it was not to be seen.
'D n your protection, cried the leader of the press-gang; 'come and serve his Majesty, that's better than catching whales. 'Is it though? said the specksioneer, with a motion of his hand, which the swift-eyed sailor opposed to him saw and interpreted rightly. 'Thou wilt, wilt thou? Close with him, Jack; and ware the cutlass.
Daniel had just had enough drink to make him very good-tempered, or else his wife would not have dared to have acted as she did; and this maudlin amiability took the shape of hospitable urgency that Kinraid should come as often as he liked to Haytersbank; come and make it his home when he was in these parts; stay there altogether, and so on, till Bell fairly shut the outer door to, and locked it before the specksioneer had well got out of the shadow of their roof.
Sylvia, appearing to listen to Molly's confidences, was hearkening in reality to all this conversation between her father and the specksioneer; and at this invitation she became especially attentive. Kinraid replied,
'He's well-to-do, and can afford everything as he needs, continued she. 'His feyther's left him money, and he were a farmer out up in Northumberland, and he's reckoned such a specksioneer as never, never was, and gets what wage he asks for and a share on every whale he harpoons beside. 'I reckon he'll have to make himself scarce on this coast for awhile, at any rate, said Philip.
'I don't know, replied Hester; 'they call him just Kinraid; and Betsy Darley says he's t' most daring specksioneer of all that go off this coast to t' Greenland seas. But he's been in Newcastle, for I mind me she said her poor brother met with him there. 'How didst thee come to know him? inquired Alice. 'I cannot abide him if it is Charley, said William.
And I've a deal to tell you. 'To be sure to be sure. To think thou's been in Lunnon sin' I saw thee! well to be sure! There's a vast o' coming and going i' this world. Thou'll mind yon specksioneer lad, him as was cousin to t' Corneys Charley Kinraid? Mind him! As if he could forget him. 'Well! he's dead and gone. 'Dead! Who told you? I don't understand, said Philip, in strange bewilderment.
'That's my cousin's ship, said Molly to Sylvia. 'He's specksioneer on board the Good Fortune. An old man touched her as she spoke 'I humbly make my manners, missus, but I'm stone blind; my lad's aboard yon vessel outside t' bar; and my old woman is bed-fast. Will she be long, think ye, in making t' harbour?
In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain's more inferior subalterns. Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is this the first lives aft, the last forward.
Some instinct told Philip that if the specksioneer had only flirted with too many, yet that for Sylvia Robson his love was true and vehement.
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