The first night we were at sea I had the middle watch, and scarcely had I made a dozen turns on deck, when he joined me. "What is your name?" said he; "I did not catch it." I told him. "Well," he continued, "there is no use denying it--I am not a sailor. The captain knows this; but I have promised soon to become one, and I want to keep my promise. Will you help me to do so, by teaching me all I want to know?" I told him I would do all I could for him, but that, as this was my first voyage in a whaler, I could not help him much about whaling matters. "Oh, that will soon come," he answered. "I seldom see a thing done once that I cannot do afterwards; but I want you to help me in seamanship. I have been constantly on the water, and know how to handle a boat, but never before made a voyage." I was so pleased with the frank way in which he acknowledged his ignorance, and the hearty desire he showed to learn, that I resolved to instruct him in everything I knew. I never found anybody pick up information so rapidly as he did. It was only necessary to show him once how to do a thing, while he kept his sharp eye fixed on the work, and ever after he did it almost if not quite as well. He very soon dropped the nautical phraseology he had assumed when he came on board, and which was clearly not habitual to him; and though he picked up all our phrases, he made use of them more in a joking way than as if he spoke them without thought, as we did. From the way he spoke, or from his manner when he addressed any of his messmates or the officers, or from the way he walked the deck, it was difficult to suppose him anything else than a gentleman-born, or a gentleman by education, whatever he had now become, and he at once got the name forward of "Gentleman Ned." I asked him his name the day after he came on board. "Oh, ay. I forgot that," he answered, quickly. "Call me Newman--Ned Newman. It's not a bad name, is it?" So Ned Newman he was called; but I felt pretty certain from the first that it was not his real name.