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MOBY DICK; OR 
them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation ; and stopping for a moment 
to interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and 
resting in consort : then, how much more natural that upon the illimi- 
table Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels 
descrying each other at the ends of the earth — off lone Panning’s Island, 
or the far-away King’s Mills; how much more natural, I say, that 
under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, 
but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And 
especially would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels 
owned in one seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of 
the men are personally known to each other; and consequently, have 
all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about. 
Por the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters 
on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of 
a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb- 
worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship 
would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground 
to which she may he destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. 
And in degree, all this will -hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing 
each other’s track on the cruising-ground itself, even though they are 
equally long absent from home. Por one of them may have received 
a transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and 
some of those letters may he for the people of the ship she now meets. 
Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable 
chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, 
but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common 
pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils. 
Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference ; 
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with 
Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number 
of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when 
they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them ; for 
your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not 
fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English 
whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the 
American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his 
nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-pe*asant. But where this 
