Well:  weeks, chronologically speaking, went by.  Bill Marvel’s stories were told over and over again, till the beginning and end dovetailed into each other, and were united for aye.  Ned Ballad’s songs were sung till the echoes lurked in the very tops, and nested in the bunts of the sails.  My poor patience was clean gone.

But, at last after some time sailing due westward we quitted the Line in high disgust; having seen there, no sign of a whale.

But whither now?  To the broiling coast of Papua?  That region of sun-strokes, typhoons, and bitter pulls after whales unattainable.  Far worse.  We were going, it seemed, to illustrate the Whistonian theory concerning the damned and the comets;—­hurried from equinoctial heats to arctic frosts.  To be short, with the true fickleness of his tribe, our skipper had abandoned all thought of the Cachalot.  In desperation, he was bent upon bobbing for the Right whale on the Nor’-West Coast and in the Bay of Kamschatska.

To the uninitiated in the business of whaling, my feelings at this juncture may perhaps be hard to understand.  But this much let me say:  that Right whaling on the Nor’-West Coast, in chill and dismal fogs, the sullen inert monsters rafting the sea all round like Hartz forest logs on the Rhine, and submitting to the harpoon like half-stunned bullocks to the knife; this horrid and indecent Right whaling, I say, compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in southern and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon blank Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting in Caffraria, where the lively quarry bounds before you through leafy glades.

Now, this most unforeseen determination on the part of my captain to measure the arctic circle was nothing more nor less than a tacit contravention of the agreement between us.  That agreement needs not to be detailed.  And having shipped but for a single cruise, I had embarked aboard his craft as one might put foot in stirrup for a day’s following of the hounds.  And here, Heaven help me, he was going to carry me off to the Pole!  And on such a vile errand too!  For there was something degrading in it.  Your true whaleman glories in keeping his harpoon unspotted by blood of aught but Cachalot.  By my halidome, it touched the knighthood of a tar.  Sperm and spermaceti!  It was unendurable.

“Captain,” said I, touching my sombrero to him as I stood at the wheel one day, “It’s very hard to carry me off this way to purgatory.  I shipped to go elsewhere.”

“Yes, and so did I,” was his reply.  “But it can’t be helped.  Sperm whales are not to be had.  We’ve been out now three years, and something or other must be got; for the ship is hungry for oil, and her hold a gulf to look into.  But cheer up my boy; once in the Bay of Kamschatka, and we’ll be all afloat with what we want, though it be none of the best.”

Worse and worse!  The oleaginous prospect extended into an immensity of Macassar.  “Sir,” said I, “I did not ship for it; put me ashore somewhere, I beseech.”  He stared, but no answer vouchsafed; and for a moment I thought I had roused the domineering spirit of the sea-captain, to the prejudice of the more kindly nature of the man.