all mockin' each other. Simeon Ryder had been
down to deacon's meetin' in the Orthodox vestry and, nigh's I can find
out, 'twas just the same down there. 'Cordin' to Sim's tell they talked
about the Lord's affairs for ten minutes and about this Egg man's for
forty."

"But why?" queried the captain. "He isn't the only fellow that has been
away from Bayport and come back again."

Mr. Cahoon shook his head. "I know it," he admitted, "but none of the
rest ever had quite so much fuss made over 'em. I cal'late, maybe, it's
on account of the way he's been led up to, as you might say. I went one
time to a kind of show place in New York, Barnum's Museum 'twas. There
was a great sign outdoor sayin', 'Come on aboard and see the White
Whale,' or somethin' similar. Well, I'd seen about every kind of a whale
_but_ a white one, so I cal'lated maybe I'd might as well spend a
quarter and see that. There was a great big kind of tank place full of
water and a whole passel of folks hangin' around the edge of it with
their mouths open, gawpin' at nothin'--nothin' but the water, that's all
there was to see. And a man up on a kind of platform he was preachin' a
sort of sermon, wavin' his arms and hollerin' about how rare and scurce
white whales was, and how the museum folks had to scour all creation
afore they got this one, and about how the round heads of Europe----"

"Crowned heads, wasn't it, Judah?"

"Hey? I don't know, maybe so. Cabbage heads it ought to have been,
'cordin' to my notion. Well, anyhow, 'twas some kind of Europe heads,
and they had all pretty nigh broke the necks belongin' to 'em gettin' to
see this whale, and how lucky we was because we could see it for the
small sum of twenty-five cents, and so on, and so on--until all hands of
us was just kind of on tiptoe, as you might say. And then, all to once,
the water in the tank kind of riz up, you know, and somethin'
white--might have been the broadside of a barn for all we had time to
see of it--showed for a jiffy, there was a 'Woosh,' and the white thing
went under again.' And that was all. The man said we was now able to
tell our children that we'd seen a white whale and that the critter
would be up to breathe again in about an hour, or week after next, or
some such time.... Anyhow, what I'm tryin' to get at is that 'twan't the
whale itself that counted so much as 'twas the way that preachin' man
led up to him. This Egbert he's been preached about and guessed about
and l