We were now thirty months from home, and as our ship was fitted at the outset to remain from home but forty, this was to be our last cruise; and home was the all-engrossing topic on every tongue, from the captain’s to the steerage boys’, all uniting in a sincere wish to return, oil or no oil. Our return, which but a short time previous had been commented upon as a vague and distant termination of a protracted voyage, was now viewed as feasible and not very remote; and we felt ourselves considerably elevated by the mere thought, when we gammoned with ships but a short time from home, of the probation they, poor fellows, would have to go through ere they arrived at the degree of experience we had acquired on this coast. The wildest of those of our crew, who had left home on the impulse of the moment, were the most anxious to return, feeling that they had paid dear enough for their whistles. We were now the longest out of any ship on the coast. It is an old adage, amongst whalemen, that when a year from home, on gammoning with any ship that has sailed subsequent to your own departure, you have the privilege of begging; when two years out, of stealing; and when three years, of stealing and begging too; so that we now had the right of exercising this privilege, in which there is more reality than romance. Fresh provisions are seized upon by the old residenters without ruth, as if they had the best right to them. This is seldom disputed by the owners, who, in the abundance of their sympathy, do not wait to be asked for such things, but press them for acceptance without thought of remuneration; doing as they would be done by, and setting an example worthy of imitation by more polished ones.