t have come
handsomely alongside of Long Wharf and been up to the custom-house
before breakfast.'

"He had drifted broadside square into Boston Harbor, past Nahant, the
Graves, Cohasset Rocks, and everything."

"I've heard of that," said the captain,--"and as it's my opinion it
couldn't be done twice, I don't mean to try it."

"I hear the noise about thy keel,
I hear the bell struck in the night,
I see the cabin-window bright,
I see the sailor at the wheel,"--

repeated Fred ----, in my ear. "Come below out of this wet and rain,"
added he.

We passed the door of the mate's state-room as we went below, and,
seeing it ajar, and Mr. Pitman, the mate, sitting there, we looked in.

"Come in, gentlemen," said he; "my watch on deck is in half an hour, and
I'm not sleepy to-night."

F---- took up a carved whale's tooth, and asked if Mr. Pitman had ever
been in the whaling business.

"Two voyages,--one before the mast, one boat-steerer;--both in the
Pacific. But whaling didn't suit me. I've a Missus now, and a couple of
as fine boys as ever you saw; and I rather be where I can come home
oftener than once in three years."

"How did you like whaling?" said I.

"Well, I don't believe there's any man but what feels different
alongside of a whale from what he does on the ship's deck. Some of those
Nantucket and New Bedford men, who've been brought up to it, as you may
say, take it naturally, and think of nothing but the whale. I've heard
of one of them boat-steerers who got ketched in a whale's mouth and
didn't come out of it quite as whole as he went in. When they asked him
what he thought when the whale nabbed him, he said he 'thought she'd
turn out about forty barrels.'

"There's a good many things about the whale, gentlemen, that everybody
don't know. Why does one whale sink when he's killed, and another don't?
Where do the whales go to, now and then?--I sailed with one captain who
used to say, that, books or no books, can't live under water or not, _he
knew_ that whales do live under water months at a time. I can't say,
myself; but this I can say,--they go ashore. You may look hard at that,
but I've seen it. We were off the coast of South America, in company
with five other ships; and all our captains were ashore one afternoon.
We had to pull some two miles or so to go off to them, and, starting
off, all hands were for racing. I was pulling stroke in the captain's
boat, and the old man gives u