"Well, gentlemen," he remarked, "it's an old saying that tastes differ, and what you've just told me proves it. I've been a whaler for nigh on to twenty-five years, but it has been a case of necessity, not choice, with me; and after the first two or three years of the life--when the novelty had worn off a bit, as you may say--I've looked forward to only one thing, and that is the scraping together of enough money to retire and get quit of it all for ever. I took to it first as a hand before the mast, and have regularly passed through all the grades--boat- steerer, third, second, and chief mate, master, and at last owner of my own ship, always with the same object ahead. And when, little more than a year ago, I put the savings of a lifetime into the purchase of the old _Walrus_ there, I thought that the dream of my life was soon to be realised, and that one trip more to the nor'ard would bring me in a sufficiency to last me the remainder of my days, and enable me to enjoy 'em in the company of my wife and my little daughter. God bless the child! if she's still alive she's five years old to-day." "Ah!" interrupted Mildmay, "then that, I suppose, accounts for the flags flying on board you, and the meaning of which we were so utterly unable to guess?" "That's it, sir," was the reply. "I `dressed ship' at eight o'clock this morning in honour of my little Florrie's birthday, and I hadn't the heart to haul down the flags even when we found ourselves in such a precious pickle amongst the ice yonder. I thought that if so be it was God's will that we was to go, we might as well go with the buntin' still flying in Florrie's honour as not." "And what success have you met with, captain?" asked Sir Reginald. "Precious little, sir. We've been out now more'n a twelvemonth, and we've only killed three fish in all that time. Got jammed up here in the ice all last winter. I stayed in hopes of doin' something in the sealing line, and only got some three hundred skins after all. It's been a bad speculation for me. An old friend of mine came this way the year before last, and, the season being an open one and not much ice about, he reached as far north as Baffin's Bay and through Jones' Sound, fillin' his ship with oil and bone in a single season. He was lucky enough to hit upon a spot where the sea was fairly alive with whales, and he filled the ship right up in that very spot. The fish seemed tame, as though they hadn't been interfered with for years; and bein' an old friend, as I said before, he gave me the latitude and longitude of the place as a great secret, and I've been trying to reach the spot ever since we came north, but have been kept back by the ice and the contrary winds. If I could get there, even now, it would make the trip profitable enough to serve my purpose; but I see no chance of it, and the men are getting disheartened."