s but a feeble creature, and if he
had to depend on his own bodily strength alone he could make no head
against even the ordinary brutes in this world. But the knowledge
which has been given to him by his Maker has clothed man with great
power, so that he is more than a match for the fiercest beast in the
forest, or the largest fish in the sea. Yet, with all his knowledge,
with all his experience, and all his power, the killing of a great old
sperm whale costs man a long, tough battle, sometimes it even costs him
his life.

It is a long time now since I took to fighting the whales. I have been
at it, man and boy, for nigh forty years, and many a wonderful sight
have I seen; many a desperate battle have I fought in the fisheries of
the North and South Seas.

Sometimes, when I sit in the chimney-corner of a winter evening,
smoking my pipe with my old messmate Tom Lokins, I stare into the fire
and think of the days gone by till I forget where I am, and go on
thinking so hard that the flames seem to turn into melting fires, and
the bars of the grate into dead fish, and the smoke into sails and
rigging, and I go to work cutting up the blubber and stirring the
oil-pots, or pulling the bow-oar and driving the harpoon at such a
rate that I can't help giving a shout, which causes Tom to start and
cry:

"Hallo! Bob" (my name is Bob Ledbury, you see). "Hallo! Bob, wot's
the matter?"

To which I reply, "Tom, can it all be true?"

"Can _wot_ be true?" says he, with a stare of surprise--for Tom is
getting into his dotage now.

And then I chuckle and tell him I was only thinking of old times, and
so he falls to smoking again, and I to staring at the fire, and
thinking as hard as ever.

The way in which I was first led to go after the whales was curious.
This is how it happened.

About forty years ago, when I was a boy of nearly fifteen years of age,
I lived with my mother in one of the seaport towns of England. There
was great distress in the town at that time, and many of the hands were
out of work. My employer, a blacksmith, had just died, and for more
than six weeks I had not been able to get employment or to earn a
farthing. This caused me great distress, for my father had died
without leaving a penny in the world, and my mother depended on me
entirely. The money I had saved out of my wages was soon spent, and
one morning when I sat down to breakfast, my mother looked across the
table and said, in a thoughtful v