THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 35 



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" When that port is made, and I am safe anchored, and 

 rich, and all that kind of thing, and can do as I please, I am 

 goin' to ship a bosin-mate from the biggest seventy-four in 

 Uncle Sam's blessed navy, and I'll give him a silver call ; 

 and his duty shall be to pipe all hands at eight bells (4 

 A.M.) in the morning, and to rap a handspike ag'in the ma- 

 hogany (inlaid with whale ivory) door of my state-room, 

 and rouse me out with, ' Starbo-a-r-d watch, a-h-o-y oy !' 

 Then I'll sing out, * Watch be blowedT and go to sleep 

 again. , What's the gain of bein' rich if you can't blow the 

 starboard watch at eight bells ?" 



Ben is about sixty-five, and has a chestful of old clothes 

 yet. Fifty - two years he has spent at sea, with short in- 

 tervals on shore. He never married, " because his mother 

 was particular on the score of daughters-in-law." Ben is 

 bruised, battered, and warped in body ; seamed and wrin- 

 kled in brow, by fire, by ice, and shipwreck. The few fin- 

 gers which the frosts of Labrador have left him are corru- 

 gated and doubled in, to fit close to the rope and the oar 

 he has tugged at for half a century. During the war of 

 1812 he served in the Constitution, and labored faithfully 

 and successfully in shooting some new ideas through Mr. 

 John Bull's head. Growing tired of the humdrum and 

 peaceful quiet of man-of-war life, he came whaling, as he 

 expressed it, to " see life, to sweat the weeds from my fig- 

 ure-head, and to rub off the barnacles which deadened my 

 headway ; and, by the great hokey ! I got in the right place 

 in the Chelsea under old Captain Davis. I'll tell you green 

 hands about that first whale I went on in the captain's 

 boat." 



