The man who responded stood in the mizzen rigging. He wore a round glazed hat, a shawl about his throat, a monkey coat to his knees. He sang out to know what ship I was, and I answered that we were the _Black Watch_, of London, chartered by a merchant of Amsterdam, and that the captain and mate, and most of the crew were Englishmen. We were bound to London, I roared to him, omitting to answer his question where we were from. Then, in answer, he shouted that he was the _Virginia Creeper_ of and from Whitby, ten months out, had met with shocking bad luck, and was bound out of these seas for the South Atlantic. All the whales had gone east. Sorry we were in such a hurry. He would have been glad to come aboard for a yarn, and for what news from home we had to give him. Were we still fighting the Yankees? A Yankee privateer had spoke him in the South Atlantic, and the captain of the vessel sent a mate aboard him with a box of cigars, and this message--that the whaler was a ship he never meddled with, no matter under what color he found her; that he honored a calling that had given his own nation her finest race of seamen; and when he sailed away he dipped to the _Virginia Creeper_ as to a friend. All this I was able to hear. The man, who spoke as a Quaker, delivered his words with a strong, slightly nasal voice, and his words came clean as the sound of a bell through the washing hiss of the water and the roar aloft. I found time to shout back that our captain was dangerously ill, and to ask the master of the whaler, as I supposed the man to be, if he knew aught of physic--of the treatment of injuries. He shook his head vehemently, crying “No!” thrice, as though he would instantly kill any hope the sight of him had excited in _that_ way; and, indeed, what should a sailor know of physic and the treatment of such a sickness as was fast killing Greaves? I asked the question to ease my conscience and to satisfy the crew, who were listening. I figured him coming aboard and stifling a groan when he saw Greaves, vexing the poor, languishing man with useless questions put to mark his sympathy, and then coming out of the berth to tell me it was a bad case. We sped onward. The voice would no longer carry, and the whaler veered astern almost into our wake, with a wild slap of her foresail, as she plunged a heavy courtesy of farewell at us.