“I found the people at odds with the captain, and all at sixes and sevens about the missing boat, which some of them seemed to think Catherton had lost by design. However, the more words I heard flying up the forecastle scuttle, the more I felt inclined at first to set this down as mere sea-babble, together with some story about Mrs. Catherton’s death, which I could not get hold of for a spell. “You see, the fellows had been hard at work on the last cruise, cutting in and trying out to their hearts’ content, as the skipper had been very fortunate in finding white whales among the islands of the Gulf, where I have seen immense shoals of them myself going in among the passages to feed upon the eight-armed squids, which the pearl-divers, at some of the fisheries, dread almost as much as the sharks. The Tartar’s boats had been very successful, and now that the ship was full and the anchor down, her crew were resolute to make amends for their precious outlay of labor, regular whaleman fashion, by grumbling at every thing abaft, and getting up an occasional quarrel with the boat-steerers—deeming it otherwise a hardship to turn out to their meals, or to a game of cards on their chest-lids. “In fact they were altogether—excepting the second mate, the old carpenter, and a few old sea-dogs—as green a set as ever stared at an island of weed; and perfect torture it was, Mr. Afterblock, to see the lubbers crawl out of the forecastle to make a voyage to the scuttle-butt, or a long cruise, like so many tortoises, fore and aft the deck. Two score and more of young, able-bodied men they were, to be sure, strong enough, I dare say, to tow a raft of whales alongside in any latitude. But the mischief of the thing was, that instead of the oil getting into their joints and making them supple, it seemed to have soddened brain and limb, until it fairly went against your stomach to ask them a question, or to call them aft to hoist up a boat to the cranes. Of course I did not expect them to equal our dying top-men, or the nimble Arabs from Darra, of whom my crew were mostly composed in the grab—especially as the mates hardly knew enough to put the ship about. But, after having been twenty months at sea, I did look for them to know one end of the ship from the other; and considering the heat of the weather and the number of desperate wretches roaming in the harbor, it was not too much, you’ll allow, to have them keep anchor-watch, or to wash down decks at daybreak.” “I wish, Mr. Miller,” said Dicky, “that we had a few of the slowest of ’em here. Green’s nigh to blue; and the higher you mount up in a squall, the sooner you’ve got to come down. Why, the lubbers would have blessed the service to their dying days, for making men of them.”