Here is a piece of plank transfixed by the sharp blade of a sword-fish; there, a pair of walrus-tusks; there, again, the beautiful horn of the narwhal, like a wonderful lance of ivory, fit weapon for King Olaf or Eric the Red. In the doorway stands a whale's jaw, a great arch ten feet high, under which all must pass with thoughts of Jonah. As for corals and shells, there is no end to them, for the upper room is a museum as well as a place of convention, and here the captains love to bring their choicest treasures, keeping only the second-best to adorn the chimney-piece of the home-parlour. In a great arm-chair, facing a seaward window, sits the patriarch of the Upper House, old Abram Bannister. His grandfather had built the inn itself, his grandsons now keep it. Every morning, winter and summer, Jake and Bill "hist" the old captain out of bed, put him in his chair, and wheel him into the great room; then they give him a spy-glass to hold in his hand, and leave him till dinner-time. The captains begin to straggle in about eight o'clock, when their morning chores are done. They greet the white old man with never-failing cordiality; he is the pride of the Upper House. They are never tired of asking him how old he is, nor of hearing him reply in his feeble, cheery pipe,-- "Ninety-nine year, and risin' a hundred." He sleeps a good deal of the day, and, on waking, never fails to cry out, "Thar' she blows!" Whereupon, one of the captains promptly replies, "Where away?" and the patriarch says,-- "Weather bow!" and straightway forgets all about it, and plays with his spy-glass. When the captains are assembled in sufficient number, they discuss the affairs of the town, talk over this or that question, and decide what the "_se_-leckmen" ought to do about it. Woe to the selectmen who should dare to oppose the decision of the Upper House! Something dreadful would happen to them; but, as they never have opposed it, one cannot tell what form the punishment would take. Now it fell, on a day, that the captains were sitting together spinning yarns, as was their custom when business was over. The present and the immediate future provided for, it was their delight to plunge into the past, and bring up the marvellous treasures hidden in that great sea. Captain Zeno Pye was telling about the loss of the "Sabra" in the year 1807. His father had been on the vessel, and Captain Zeno sometimes forgot that it was not himself, so often had he told the story. The other captains, sitting like so many veiled prophets, each shrouded in his cloud of smoke, listened with the placid enjoyment of connoisseurs, making a mental note of any slightest variation of word or inflection in the familiar narrative. Any one of them could have told it in his sleep, but it was Captain Zeno's story, and it was one of the unwritten laws of the Upper House that no captain should tell another's story.