"Come in, gentlemen," said he; "my watch on deck is in half an hour, and I'm not sleepy to-night." F---- took up a carved whale's tooth, and asked if Mr. Pitman had ever been in the whaling business. "Two voyages,--one before the mast, one boat-steerer;--both in the Pacific. But whaling didn't suit me. I've a Missus now, and a couple of as fine boys as ever you saw; and I rather be where I can come home oftener than once in three years." "How did you like whaling?" said I. "Well, I don't believe there's any man but what feels different alongside of a whale from what he does on the ship's deck. Some of those Nantucket and New Bedford men, who've been brought up to it, as you may say, take it naturally, and think of nothing but the whale. I've heard of one of them boat-steerers who got ketched in a whale's mouth and didn't come out of it quite as whole as he went in. When they asked him what he thought when the whale nabbed him, he said he 'thought she'd turn out about forty barrels.' "There's a good many things about the whale, gentlemen, that everybody don't know. Why does one whale sink when he's killed, and another don't? Where do the whales go to, now and then?--I sailed with one captain who used to say, that, books or no books, can't live under water or not, _he knew_ that whales do live under water months at a time. I can't say, myself; but this I can say,--they go ashore. You may look hard at that, but I've seen it. We were off the coast of South America, in company with five other ships; and all our captains were ashore one afternoon. We had to pull some two miles or so to go off to them, and, starting off, all hands were for racing. I was pulling stroke in the captain's boat, and the old man gives us the word to pull easy, and let 'em head on us. It was hard work to hold in, with every one of the boats giving way, strong, the captains singing out bets, and cheering their men,--singing out, 'Break your backs and bend your oars!' 'There she blows!' and all that. But the old man kept muttering to us to take it easy and let them head on us. We were soon the last boat, and then, as if he'd given up the race, he gave the word to 'easy.' "'Good-night, Capt. T----! we'll send your ship in to tow you off,' was the last words they said to us. "'There'll be something else to tow off,' says he. 'It's the race, who shall see Palmer's Island first, that I'm bound to win.' "He gave the boat a sheer in for the beach, to a little bight that made up in the land,--across the mouth of which we had to pull, in going off.