"So you thought you came down here pretty fast?" asked Randy, repeating the remark which opened this narrative. "And well you might, with the roads in the condition they are now. But I've been sleighing faster than any of you boys have traveled, unless it was on a railroad train, and over the roughest sort of a track, too."
We all foresaw a story at once and were eager enough to hear the tale. So with little urging Randy began:
"When I was a boy you know I went to sea," he said, and we all nodded acquiescence, for about every story Randy told commenced with just that remark. "My parents died when I was young and I was bound out to an old uncle; but farming wasn't to my taste, and I was always longing so for salt water that finally he told me I wasn't worth my board and clothes, and to clear out and go to sea if I wanted to.
"I didn't need any second bidding. I went off that very night, and I never saw my Uncle Eb again.
"After going two or three trips to 'the banks,' I shipped aboard the New Bedford whaler Henry Clay, knowing well enough that whaling couldn't be a great sight worse than fishing off Newfoundland in the dead of winter.
"As luck would have it, though, the Henry Clay joined the North Atlantic fleet and started for the Greenland fishing grounds. We lost the rest of the fleet in a big blow off Cape Farewell and worked northward alone, having the good fortune to fall in with several school of right whales, out of which we captured three or four 'balleeners,'[*] the oil and bone together being worth something like eighteen thousand dollars.
[Footnote *: All the large whales of the region referred to are called "balleeners" as their mouths are furnished with the balleen or whalebone of commerce.]
"The captain had begun to crow over the fine season we were having, when, early in October, we were caught in a nip in Cumberland Inlet, and the ice piled in so solidly around us that we knew we were good for all winter. There wasn't any particular danger, for the Henry Clay was a well-built craft, strengthened to withstand just such a squeeze as the ice-pack was giving us.
"Captain Simon Lewis, as kind-hearted a man as ever I sailed under, made all needed preparations for winter at once, and we boys before the mast looked forward to a pretty jolly season.