This allusion happily preserved the peace; for, if there were any thing in the world for which the commodore entertained a profound, but obscure reverence, it was for a whale. He even thought better of a man for having actually seen one, gambolling in the freedom of the ocean; and his mind became suddenly oppressed by the glory of a mariner, who had passed his life among such gigantic animals. Shoving back his cap, the old man gazed steadily at the captain a minute, and all his displeasure about the 'sogdollagers' vanished, though, in his inmost mind, he set down all that the other had told him on that particular subject, as so many parts of a regular 'fish story.' "Captain Truck," he said, with solemnity, "I acknowledge myself to be but an ignorant and inexperienced man, one who has passed his life on this lake, which, broad and beautiful as it is, must seem a pond in the eyes of a seaman like yourself, who have passed your days on the Atlantic----" "Atlantic!" interrupted the captain contemptuously, "I should have but a poor opinion of myself, had I seen nothing but the Atlantic! Indeed, I never can believe I am at sea at all, on the Atlantic, the passages between New-York and Portsmouth being little more than so much canalling along a tow-path. If you wish to say any thing about oceans, talk of the Pacific, or of the Great South Sea, where a man may run a month with a fair wind, and hardly go from island to island. Indeed, that is an ocean in which there is a manufactory of islands, for they turn them off in lots to supply the market, and of a size to suit customers." "A manufactory of islands!" repeated the commodore, who began to entertain an awe of his companion, that he never expected to feel for any human being on Lake Otsego; "are you certain, sir, there is no mistake in this?" "None in the least; not only islands, but whole Archipelagos are made annually, by the sea insects in that quarter of the world; but, then, you are not to form your notions of an insect in such an ocean, by the insects you see in such a bit of water as this." "As big as our pickerel, or salmon trout, I dare say?" returned the commodore, in the simplicity of his heart, for by this time his local and exclusive conceit was thoroughly humbled, and he was almost ready to believe any thing. "I say nothing of their size, for it is to their numbers and industry that I principally allude now. A solitary shark, I dare say, would set your whole Lake in commotion?" "I think we might manage a shark, sir. I once saw one of those animals, and I do really believe the sogdollager would outweigh him. I do think we might manage a shark, sir." "Ay, you mean an in-shore, high-latitude fellow. But what would you say to a shark as long as one of those pines on the mountain?" "Such a monster would take in a man, whole?" "A man! He would take in a platoon, Indian file I dare say one of those pines, now, may be thirty or forty feet high!"