n Gate? Didn't I sail in as a youngster, second
mate on the brig _Berncastle_, into Hakodate, pumping double watches to
keep afloat just because a whale took a smash at us? Didn't the full-
rigged ship, the whaler _Essex_, sink off the west coast of South
America, twelve hundred miles from the nearest land for the small boats
to cover, and all because of a big cow whale that butted her into
kindling-wood?"

And Simon Nishikanta, in his grouch, disdaining to reply, would continue
to pepper the last whale into flight beyond the circle of the sea their
vision commanded.

"I remember the whaleship _Essex_," the Ancient Mariner told Dag
Daughtry. "It was a cow with a calf that did for her. Her barrels were
two-thirds full, too. She went down in less than an hour. One of the
boats never was heard of."

"And didn't another one of her boats get to Hawaii, sir?" Daughtry
queried with all due humility of respect. "Leastwise, thirty years ago,
when I was in Honolulu, I met a man, an old geezer, who claimed he'd been
a harpooner on a whaleship sunk by a whale off the coast of South
America. That was the first and last I heard of it, until right now you
speaking of it, sir. It must a-been the same ship, sir, don't you
think?"

"Unless two different ships were whale-sunk off the west coast," the
Ancient Mariner replied. "And of the one ship, the _Essex_, there is no
discussion. It is historical. The chance is likely, steward, that the
man you mentioned was from the _Essex_."

CHAPTER XIII

Captain Doane worked hard, pursuing the sun in its daily course through
the sky, by the equation of time correcting its aberrations due to the
earth's swinging around the great circle of its orbit, and charting
Sumner lines innumerable, working assumed latitudes for position until
his head grew dizzy.

Simon Nishikanta sneered openly at what he considered the captain's
inefficient navigation, and continued to paint water-colours when he was
serene, and to shoot at whales, sea-birds, and all things hurtable when
he was downhearted and sea-sore with disappointment at not sighting the
Lion's Head peak of the Ancient Mariner's treasure island.

"I'll show I ain't a pincher," Nishikanta announced one day, after having
broiled at the mast-head for five hours of sea-searching. "Captain
Doane, how much could we have bought extra chronometers for in San
Francisco--good second-hand ones, I mean?"

"Say a hundred dollars," the