“I was once, gentlemen,” he said, “cruising near Cape Musseldon, in command of an armed grab, in the service of the Sultan of Muscat, when, one squally morning, in a part of the Persian Gulf where the navigation is particularly intricate, we fell in with a large whale-ship, showing American colors. When we first made her out she had one boat down, waiting, apparently, for the whales to come up. “Those seas were then famous feeding-grounds for the white whale, and although we felt sure there was a shoal close by, some wonder was expressed in the grab, at the boldness of the Yankee skipper, in sending his men off in the face of the fresh squall then rising over the land. However, as we neared her the shoal rose, and they fastened. We could see him lower another boat, which pulled to leeward of the ship, when the squall struck the grab, and we lost sight of them all at once. The weather continued rough for several days, with fog and rain, and although I felt great anxiety for the safety of the ship and her boats, as we were almost embayed by banks and shoals, I heard nothing of their fate, until sometime after my arrival at Muscat.” Here the mate paused and walked to the rail to take another look at the finner, still close aboard, heading with the proud old frigate, and blowing away, from time to time, or lifting his sharp back half out, as if he had a notion to speak us. You could see the white spray, mingled with condensed air and mucus from his seething nostrils, rising, in two divergent branches, straight up from the shifting gleam of the soft swells, into the clear moonlight, from whence it faded, before you could wink an eyelid, into the greenish mass of foam to leeward of his track, between him and the ship. Two bells struck a moment after, and as the clang died away in the lee rigging, and your ear caught again the natural sounds of the craft, making her way through the water, the mate returned to his place and resumed. “I was so thoroughly disgusted with the illiberal manner in which the British officers had acted in a late expedition against the pirates of the Gulf, and with the servility of Syed Seeyd bin Sultan, himself, to the agents of the East India Company, that I resigned my commission in his service when the cruise was up, and had already taken passage in a merchant dow, for Zanzibar, when the very whaleman I had seen in the Gulf, came into the cove of Muscat to recruit, and changed my plans in an unexpected way.