I was not greatly comforted. I could not stand it any longer, and I went to the stern and tried to get a breath of sweet air. There was none. All the air over that great ocean seemed to be loaded with poison from the burning scraps, and I gave it up, and turned in. I lay for a long time in the darkness, listening to the breathing of the men in the other bunks, and seeing, before the eye of the mind, the ooze from those seams grow into light amber-colored drops. Then I thought of the multitude of barrels that would make up our full cargo—twenty-four hundred of them—and from each cask an ooze of oil that grew imperceptibly into a drop. It was incredibly slow, that growth. And then all the drops growing, even more slowly, until they shivered a little, {102} ready to fall. I almost held my breath, waiting for them to fall, and tried to multiply twenty-four hundred by three hundred and sixty-five by four—see whether you can do it, in your head, while you wait for all those drops to fall at once—mental arithmetic, they called it in school. I remember that I wished I knew how much oil there was in a drop, so that I should know how much oil we should lose if, for each barrel, there was a leak amounting to a drop a day. Before I had the problem more than begun, I fell asleep, with the drops all trembling, on the very point of falling. I dreamt about it, and woke early. The problem still bothered me, and I went to get pencil and paper, or its equivalent, and figure out that product. Then I would ask Captain Nelson how much oil there was in a drop, and I should know. {103} CHAPTER XI We were nearly a month on Hatteras grounds, with good weather, on the whole. We spoke several merchant vessels, one of which was a big five-masted schooner bound into Charleston from Batavia. None of the men had seen such a big schooner-rigged vessel before, and they all gazed at her with their mouths hanging open as long as she was in sight. There was nothing beautiful about her with her stubby-looking masts and big sails. She would have made five of us easily, and the Clearchus was fairly big for a whaler. There was a smashing southwest breeze that day, and the schooner roared by us, close-hauled, with all lowers set and trimmed flat, carrying a big bone in her teeth, and spray flying over her, forward, with every sea. We were working well toward the southern edge of the grounds. Whales were scarce and shy. One wise old bull succeeded in inducing Mr. Baker and Mr. Tilton to keep after him for eight hours, gradually making to windward in a heavy sea, until he finally left them, giving a snort of derision as he went. I suppose he thought that, as it was about bedtime, he would call it a day. The men came back utterly beat out and disgusted.