But as our water improved, we grew more and more miserly of so priceless a treasure.

And here it may be well to make mention of another little circumstance, however unsentimental.  Thorough-paced tar that he was, my Viking was an inordinate consumer of the Indian weed.  From the Arcturion, he had brought along with him a small half-keg, at bottom impacted with a solitary layer of sable Negrohead, fossil-marked, like the primary stratum of the geologists.  It was the last tier of his abundant supply for the long whaling voyage upon which he had embarked upwards of three years previous.  Now during the calm, and for some days after, poor Jarl’s accustomed quid was no longer agreeable company.  To pun:  he eschewed his chew.  I asked him wherefore.  He replied that it puckered up his mouth, above all provoked thirst, and had somehow grown every way distasteful.  I was sorry; for the absence of his before ever present wad impaired what little fullness there was left in his cheek; though, sooth to say, I no longer called upon him as of yore to shift over the enormous morsel to starboard or larboard, and so trim our craft.

The calm gone by, once again my sea-tailor plied needle and thread; or turning laundress, hung our raiment to dry on oars peaked obliquely in the thole-pins.  All of which tattered pennons, the wind being astern, helped us gayly on our way; as jolly poor devils, with rags flying in the breeze, sail blithely through life; and are merry although they are poor!

CHAPTER XVIII My Lord Shark And His Pages

There is a fish in the sea that evermore, like a surly lord, only goes abroad attended by his suite.  It is the Shovel-nosed Shark.  A clumsy lethargic monster, unshapely as his name, and the last species of his kind, one would think, to be so bravely waited upon, as he is.  His suite is composed of those dainty little creatures called Pilot fish by sailors.  But by night his retinue is frequently increased by the presence of several small luminous fish, running in advance, and flourishing their flambeaux like link-boys lighting the monster’s way.  Pity there were no ray-fish in rear, page-like, to carry his caudal train.

Now the relation subsisting between the Pilot fish above mentioned and their huge ungainly lord, seems one of the most inscrutable things in nature.  At any rate, it poses poor me to comprehend.  That a monster so ferocious, should suffer five or six little sparks, hardly fourteen inches long, to gambol about his grim hull with the utmost impunity, is of itself something strange.  But when it is considered, that by a reciprocal understanding, the Pilot fish seem to act as scouts to the shark, warning him of danger, and apprising him of the vicinity of prey; and moreover, in case of his being killed, evincing their anguish by certain agitations, otherwise inexplicable; the whole thing becomes a mystery unfathomable.  Truly marvels abound.  It needs no dead man to be raised, to convince us of some things.  Even my Viking marveled full as much at those Pilot fish as he would have marveled at the Pentecost.