Chapter 21

A WHALEMAN AND A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN

The sight of the whales mentioned in the preceding chapter was the
bringing out of Larry, one of our crew, who hitherto had been quite
silent and reserved, as if from some conscious inferiority, though he
had shipped as an ordinary seaman, and, for aught I could see, performed
his duty very well.

When the men fell into a dispute concerning what kind of whales they
were which we saw, Larry stood by attentively, and after garnering in
their ignorance, all at once broke out, and astonished every body by his
intimate acquaintance with the monsters.

"They ar'n't sperm whales," said Larry, "their spouts ar'n't bushy
enough; they ar'n't Sulphur-bottoms, or they wouldn't stay up so long;
they ar'n't Hump-backs, for they ar'n't got any humps; they ar'n't
Fin-backs, for you won't catch a Finback so near a ship; they ar'n't
Greenland whales, for we ar'n't off the coast of Greenland; and they
ar'n't right whales, for it wouldn't be right to say so. I tell ye, men,
them's Crinkum-crankum whales."

"And what are them?" said a sailor.

"Why, them is whales that can't be cotched."

Now, as it turned out that this Larry had been bred to the sea in a
whaler, and had sailed out of Nantucket many times; no one but Jackson
ventured to dispute his opinion; and even Jackson did not press him very
hard. And ever after, Larry's judgment was relied upon concerning all
strange fish that happened to float by us during the voyage; for
whalemen are far more familiar with the wonders of the deep than any
other class of seaman.

This was Larry's first voyage in the merchant service, and that was the
reason why, hitherto, he had been so reserved; since he well knew that
merchant seamen generally affect a certain superiority to "blubber-
boilers," as they contemptuously style those who hunt the leviathan.
But Larry turned out to be such an inoffensive fellow, and so well
understood his business aboard ship, and was so ready to jump to an
order, that he was exempted from the taunts which he might otherwise
have encountered.

He was a somewhat singular man, who wore his hat slanting forward over
the bridge of his nose, with his eyes cast down, and seemed always
examining your boots, when speaking to you. I loved to hear him talk
about the wild places in the Indian Ocean, and on the coast of
Madagascar, where he had frequently touched during his whaling voyages.
And this familiarity with the life of nature led by the people in that
remote part of the world, had furnished Larry with a sentimental
distaste for civilized society. When opportunity offered, he never
omitted extolling the delights of the free and easy