10 THE MATE'S STORY. 



things ; I haven't patience with men who, never having 

 travelled much, or been across the oceans, quietly tell the 

 world that what a hundred sane men's experienced eyes 

 have seen and known as a sea-serpent is discovered by 

 their scientific reasoning to be a bundle of seaweed, or a 

 shoal of porpesses, because they saw once at Brighton one 

 or the other, when even a land-lubber could hardly have 

 been mistaken. My wise doctor tried to prove that what 

 the skipper had seen with his own eyes was nothing but 

 the result of a supper he hadn't eaten, or the fumes of some 

 grog that wern't swallowed ; because it happened not to 

 be accounted for in his fusty old books in any other way 

 I would sooner be without science, if this is the result. 



" Bless you, sir, I never yet saw one of your great learned 

 sailors worth much in an extremity. Give me a fellow who 

 acts from his practical experience. A man much given 

 to be particular about ' how the log-book is kept/ about 

 dotting i's and crossing t's, is generally struck of a heap, 

 if the ship happens to be taken aback, or a squall carries 

 away her gear. While he is going over his logarithms to 

 know what should be done, the commonest seaman on 

 board could set all to rights. Mind I don't run down 

 any book-learning you may have, but I only say it ain't 

 equal to experience, and it never will convince me that, if 

 I see a square-rigged ship a mile off, I am only mistaken, 

 and that a man in London knows by science that it was a 

 fore-and-aft schooner and close to me ; or if I see a school of 

 whales, he knows they are only flying fish, because science 

 tells him the whale does not frequent the part where I 

 saw them; and that my supper caused me to mistake one 



