34 NIMROD OF THE SEA; OR, 



between the escape of the stricken whale in the one sea and 

 its subsequent capture in the other." 



The interest in this view lies in the existence of the inter- 

 oceanic canal; but the sperm-whales are close-mouthed (as 

 we afterward learned), and keep their own secrets. One of 

 the men remarked that the idea was " too simple and ration- 

 al to be believed," and he went into a scholarly yarn on the 

 subsidence of a great part of our continent, the lofty finger- 

 prints of which he said yet remain visible in the mountain 

 heights of Cuba, San Domingo, and the chain of the Carib- 

 bees. And he told of a civilization in this Western World 

 older than the Pyramids, and in existence before the learned 

 Brahman Menou recorded, in Sanscrit, the dawn of human 

 history. But the incidents of the day indisposed us for 

 subjects so scientific, and all knowledge concerning the Gulf 

 Stream was voted a whaleman's yarn. 



Old Ben, one of our crew, was then called on for his yarn 

 about the first time he went on a sperm-whale. This story 

 was as nuts 'and cider to the green hands, inasmuch as it 

 was an honest confession that an old hand had been "gal- 

 lied" (frightened). The fellow-feeling made us wondrous 

 kind. But you should know Ben Coffin in order to ap- 

 preciate the fun of the story. Ben, in his youth, might have 

 sat for the picture which Dibdin sang : 



" His form was of the manliest beauty, 



His heart was kind and soft, 

 Faithful below he did his duty, 

 But now he's gone aloft." 



Ben, as he begins, says he is a rich farmer's son, and that 

 he came to sea to wear out his old clothes. When he gets 

 through with the job, he is going to play the role of the 

 Prodigal Son, and go back to the old Vermont farm, and say, 

 " Father, I have whaled," which involves all of sinning, and 

 then eat fat veal all the rest of his days. 



