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MOBY DICK; OR 
I conclude, that in boasting himself to he high lifted above a whaleman, 
in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on. 
But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running 
up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. 
Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster’s ark 
does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for 
many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born 
Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated 
into the Lexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it. 
GAM. Noun — A social meeting of two ( or more) whale ships , 
generally on a cruising-ground ; when , after exchanging hails , they ex- 
change visits by boats' crews; the two captains remaining , for the time, 
on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other . 
There is another little item about Gamming which must not be 
forgotten here. All professions have their own little peculiarities of 
detail ; so has the whale-fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, 
when the captain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the 
stern sheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often 
steers himself with a pretty little milliner’s tiller decorated with gay 
cords and ribbons. But the whale boat has no seat astern, no sofa 
of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times indeed, if whal- 
ing captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old 
aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale boat never 
admits of any such effeminacy ; and therefore as in gamming a complete 
boat’s crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or har- 
pooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the 
occasion, and the captain, having no place to sit in, is -pulled off to his 
visit all standing like a pine tree. And often you will notice that being 
conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from 
the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to the 
importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor is 
this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting 
steering-oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the 
after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus 
completely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself 
sideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, vio- 
lent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length 
