"You must tell me about your adventures," she said. "Your brother told me that you ran away to sea when you were only twelve years old and sailed on a long whaling voyage." "Yep. _South Sea Belle_. Some old hooker, she was," said Cap'n Amazon briskly. "We was out three year and come home with our hold bustin' with ile, plenty of baleen, some sperm, and a lump of ambergris as big as a nail keg--or pretty nigh." Right then and there he launched into relating how the wondrous find of ambergris came to be made, neglecting his breakfast to do so. He told it so vividly that Louise was enthralled. The picture of the whaling bark beating up to the dead and festering leviathan lying on the surface of the ocean to which the exploding gases of decomposition had brought the hulk, lived in her mind for days. The mate of the _South Sea Belle_, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted upon boarding the carcass. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth so great a sum to the perfumer. "'Twas a big haul--one o' the biggest lumps o' ambergris ever brought into the port of New Bedford," concluded Cap'n Amazon. "Helped make the owners rich, and the Old Man, too. Course, I got my sheer; but a boy's sheer on a whaler them days wouldn't buy him no house and lot. So I went to sea again." "You must have been at sea almost all your life, Cap'n Amazon." "Pretty nigh. I ain't never lazed around on shore when there was a berth in a seaworthy craft to be had for the askin'. I let Abe do that," he added, in what Louise thought was a rather scornful tone. "Why, I don't believe Uncle Abram has a lazy bone in his body! See the nice business he has built up here. And he told me he owned shares in several vessels and other property." "That's true," Cap'n Amazon agreed promptly. "And a tidy sum in the Paulmouth National Bank. I got a letter to the bank folks he left to introduce me, if I needed cash. Yes, Abe's done well enough that way. But he's the first Silt, I swanny! that ever stayed ashore." "And now you are going to remain ashore yourself," she said, laughing. "I'm going to try it, Louise. I've done my sheer of roaming about. Mebbe I'll settle down here for good." "With Cap'n Abe? Won't that be fine?" "Yep. With Abe," he muttered and remained silent for the rest of the meal. On Saturday the store trade was expected to be larger than usual. Louise told Cap'n Amazon she would gladly help wait on the customers; but he would not listen to that for a moment.