Old Ironsides was jogging along before a lazy wind, which barely kept the sails asleep; and the whale, after again expelling the vitiated air from his blow-holes, having nothing more attractive to engage his attention at the time, from a feeling of fellowship perhaps, kept way with the ship. Some old heads on the forecastle soon hailed him for “a finner,” bound on his travels to the Ionian sea, and forthwith predicted, at the peril of their eyes, that we should see him “down flukes” and off on a wind, before another bell had gone. There was little sea running at the time, and the moon shining fairly on his track gave us some idea of his gigantic proportions, which, to tell the truth, these same veritable Tritons were in nowise disposed to curtail. However, it was agreed among the mids, debating the matter in council with the mate, that from his broad flukes to the small triangular fin on the ridge of his back, and thence, from his spout-holes to the arch of his lower jaw, he ran not less than an hundred feet. It was also estimated that he would outweigh a drove of, at least, two hundred fat oxen. His age, they unanimously declared, was a question to be left to the learned professors. Even the bearded Nestors of the forecastle, wise as mermen in aught appertaining to the sea—albeit they claimed him for an old acquaintance—did not pretend to settle that point. He might have been fourscore-and-ten, or he might have blown brine from his nostrils, coasting undiscovered shores, long before the grand cruise of Columbus. Mr. Willful, the reefer before referred to, took occasion to indulge in a lofty flight of fancy, as he announced his adherence to the opinion which measured the creature’s days by the scale of centuries. “And I,” squeaked another, fresh from school, “whatever anguish of spirit it may cost me—‘sink or swim’—I avow myself of the same faith with the honorable gentleman whose eloquence has electrified the ears of these venerable sheet-anchor-men.” “Come,” said Dick Afterblock, reseating himself on the spars, “keep a small helm, you featherheads, and let’s hear Mr. Miller’s yarn.” The master’s mate was standing in the moonlight, seeming to watch the freakish light, as it danced far away in the whale’s smooth wake, or wandered among the barnacles on its rough noddle—or peered dubiously into the wide curvature of its nostrils—or showed the living eye on the crest of the weltering wave, twenty feet from where you looked to find it—or rode triumphantly on its flukes, or upon the ridge of its back-fin. You might have seen, then, by the stern, abstracted look of the man’s face, that his mind was busy with something, which you felt it was like groping in the dark to attempt to fathom. Then, as the midshipman spoke, the old weatherly look came back, slowly though, as if it cost him a struggle; and after a thoughtful turn or two on the deck, reseating himself upon the spars, he commenced—