“‘You think now, my lads,’ said he, ‘that you have made a prime v’y’ge, with forty-five hundred b’rr’ls sparm ile in the ship, and the tryworks down—you, Bungs, with a good _lay_[8] and no finger in the slop-chist—and the doctor, with his ten b’rr’ls of slush extra, besides his perquisites for washing the mate’s clothes for twenty odd months—wait till the anchor’s down in Bedford Bay, before you crow, my lads. For my part, unless some lucky chance, as you knows nothin’ of now, turns up, I no more looks to see home in this ship than I looks for to see the new mate to turn missionary, or the skipper to kneel down to the sun with the old Parshee—and eyther aire a long way from my thoughts, I kin tell you. Isn’t the ship haunted in the cabins; and ar’n’t there two Jonases, at least, on board—and another that I knows of—not to speak of him that’s gone to his reckonin’, with murder on his soul, as sartin as we three be settin’ here, as helpless as so many gonies with fish-hooks in their beaks.’ “‘What kin a man do, Chips?’ answered the cooper, apparently much moved with this pleasant prospect of his crony’s. ‘If we stir tack or sheet, in the way you seem to pint, it’s mutiny—and we all know what that leads to. If we makes a complaint to this here bashaw, or sultan, or whatsoever he calls hisself, ten staves to a whitlin’, that the skipper, or the old yaller nabob with the Teneriffe-cap—as they say kin do a great deal here in his way—turns it all into gammon. If you, old head, can see through this traverse, why don’t you say so at once—all among friends—instead of bullragin’ a feller about a matter as he kin no more work out of than a suckin’ whale kin stem a strong current?’ “Here I could hear him whiffing his pipe in high dudgeon, while the other, lowering his voice to a true sea-croak, answered him all the cooler; feeling his way, as I thought, to some plan of his own, which I was doubly anxious to get at, as both men, from their stations in the ship, had considerable influence with the crew. “‘Thar be some things so dark, d’ye mind,’ said the oracle, ‘that no man kin see through ’em till the Lord’s own time—and some as no man—not even them as is concarned the deepest—kin give a reason for, no more than you kin tell me why a whale always dies with his head toward the sun. As I takes it, this matter about the mate and the skipper’s wife be of this sort.