"Smell, eh! 'spects dats de reason dey always ships black man for cook. Carry his own smell wid him eh? Not strong like Samson but like billy-goat. Now, you see, Jeff, you'm strong bofe ways." "Am I?" said Jeff, seizing the unfortunate doctor by the leg and the back of his neck, and holding him suspended over the whale in his Herculean grasp. "I've a good mind to give you an overboard bunk on this whale, just to show you the difference between a cook's berth and a boatsteerer's." "O Lord!" gasped the cook, when he was released, and once more found soundings with his feet on the deck, "you'm pretty strong one way, anyhow. Well, now, Jeff, how much did you ever see a whale make?" "A hund'ed and eighty barrels." "What! a sparm whale?" "Didn't say nothin' bout sparm whale. No, a right whale; the first voyage I went on Pattygoney." "O! I mean a sparm whale." "Well, I seen one make a hund'ed and fifteen barrels, that's the most. Now, here comes Cooper. Got his pipe loaded, too. I'll bet he's seen bigger one than that. Ask him now." The boys began to rally to a focus along the starboard-waist, as they saw the cooper coming forward. "Cooper," said I, "where's your fiddle to-night? Are you going to fetch her up?" "No, guess not to-night. Plenty of work for all of us to-morrow without shaking a leg over night." "Yes, plenty of work and no grog," growled Burley. "That's the worst of these temperance ships. They expect a man to work like a dog, and give him nothing to warm his heart. If men stood up for their rights, they'd have it. A man's entitled to two glasses a day, anyhow." "Not without he ships for it," said Jeff. "Yes, I say he is," said the sea-lawyer. "How's that?" "Why, by the natural rights of man." "What the plague do you call the natural rights of man?" said the cooper, among whose crooked traits intemperance was not included. "I don't want to see grog served out in any ship where I am." "Well, I wish the ould man would jist ask me to take a dhrop wid him," said Farrell. "Of course, I'd refuse; but, then, 'twould be doin' the nate thing on his part."