"I've seen so much of the bad effects of liquor," said the cooper, "that I don't want to be shipmates with it at all. It does a man no good in the long run. Sometimes, it's true, he can get steam up, and work faster for a short time, but he feels all the worse after the liquor dies in him. In such a case as cutting a whale in bad weather, where you want to gain time, it's convenient to have some; but I think it does more harm in the long run than will balance these temporary benefits. The trouble is, human nature is weak, and it isn't every shipmaster that can have charge of it without crooking his own elbow too often. Then again, all men can't stand it alike; and though some of us might bear two glasses well enough, others will get drunk and make difficulty on the same quantity, for, of course, you must serve all hands alike. We haven't all got systems like old Captain Harper, in the Deucalion. He could drink a deck-bucketful of New England rum, and stand up under it and back it round. I've seen him do it many a time." "Now, Cooper," said I, "go it now, you've got started." "Maybe you don't believe it, youngster," said the cooper, shaking his immense beard with the gravity of a sage. "But you have seen very little of the world yet. What _I've seen, I know_." "Sh' think he'd burn hisself all up," said the cook, extending his mouth in a grin, till the upper part of his head formed a peninsula. "Had no more effect than pouring it into a leaky cask," continued the cooper, who had now mounted his hobby. "Perfect salamander! I always believed he was coppered inside. Why, I've seen that old man make many a meal off of red peppers, and wash them down with raw brandy." "Why not say aquafortis?" I suggested. "No, I don't want to deviate from the truth," said the conscientious cooper. "I don't mean aquafortis, but I mean good Cognac brandy. Drink a potful of boiling tea right out of the cook's copper, just as natural as I'd take a drink of water from the scuttlebutt." "Dere, Cooper, dat'll do," said the astonished African. "He must been some relation to dat Sally Mander, or somebody else wuss'n her. I was going to ask you how much you ever see a sparm whale make? Jeff says he seen one make a hund'ed and fifteen barrels." "That isn't much," said the cooper, quietly. "When I was in the old Bajazet, we got a sperm whale in sight of French Rock, and it came on to blow, and we had an ugly job to cut him. We lost all his case; it got pretty old and mellow alongside, and 'shot' before we got hooked on it to. We got the junk in by cutting it in two pieces, for the old man wouldn't risk the mainmast to lift the whole on it. Well, we saved a hundred and sixty-four barrels, and I suppose we lost about forty." "Tell that for anybody to believe it, Cooper?" asked Old Jeff. "I can't get up tackles enough to h'ist in the yard. It's heavier than that junk was." "Took the gauges of every cask myself," said the cooper.