Tom slowly, "that if a whale makes his
breakfast entirely off them little things that you can hardly see when
you get 'em into a tumbler--I forget how the captain calls 'em--wot a
_tree-mendous_ heap of 'em he must eat in the course of a year!"

"Thousands of 'em, I suppose," said one of the men.

"Thousands!" cried Tom, "I should rather say billions of them."

"How much is billions, mate?" enquired Bill.

"I don't know," answered Tom. "Never could find out. You see it's
heaps upon heaps of thousands, for the thousands come first and the
billions afterwards; but when I've thought uncommon hard, for a long
spell at a time, I always get confused, because millions comes in
between, d'ye see, and that's puzzlin'."

"I think I could give you some notion about these things," said Fred
Borders, who had been quietly listening all the time, but never putting
in a word, for, as I have said, Fred was a modest bashful man and
seldom spoke much. But we had all come to notice that when Fred spoke,
he had always something to say worth hearing; and when he did speak he
spoke out boldly enough. We had come to have feelings of respect for
our young shipmate, for he was a kind-hearted lad, and we saw by his
conversation that he had been better educated than the most of us, so
all our tongues stopped as the eyes of the party turned on him.

"Come, Fred, let's hear it then," said Tom.

"It's not much I have to tell," began Fred, "but it may help to make
your minds clearer on this subject. On my first voyage to the whale
fishery (you know, lads, this is my second voyage) I went to the
Greenland Seas. We had a young doctor aboard with us--quite a youth;
indeed he had not finished his studies at college, but he was cleverer,
for all that, than many an older man that had gone through his whole
course. I do believe that the reason of his being so clever was, that
he was for ever observing things, and studying them, and making notes,
and trying to find out reasons. He was never satisfied with knowing a
thing; he must always find out _why_ it was. One day I heard him ask
the captain what it was that made the sea so green in some parts of
those seas. Our captain was an awfully stupid man. So long as he got
plenty oil he didn't care two straws for the reason of anything. The
young doctor had been bothering him that morning with a good many
questions, so when he asked him what made the sea green, he answered
sharply, 'I suppose it