"Well, Jeff," said the ebony doctor, as he stood leaning over the rail after having finished his work for the night, "how much ile you tink dat whale make?"
"That whale," returned Jeff, measuring his dimensions with his eye, with a look of most profound sagacity, "that whale will stow down a hund'ed barrels, if we save him clean."
"Save him clean? Save him fast enough," said the cook. "Fine weather."
"Yes, 'tis now, but you don't know how long it will be so," said Old Jeff, who was in one of his "blue-lights" humors. "You don't know what the weather'll be to-morrow."
"You've got no business to guess. Who shipped any such black ghost as you to guess about the weather?"
"_Black_ ghost, eh! You know what the pot called the kettle, Jeff? Yah! yah! You aint more'n a half-price nigger, nohow. You wouldn't fetch more'n fifty dollars in Kentucky, if you be big. Sh' think you might be big, too; you eats 'bout six men's allowance. Look o' me, now; I don't eat nothin' hardly."
"You've no business to eat anything. The cook's always 'lowed to live on the smell."
"Smell, eh! 'spects dats de reason dey always ships black man for cook. Carry his own smell wid him eh? Not strong like Samson but like billy-goat. Now, you see, Jeff, you'm strong bofe ways."
"Am I?" said Jeff, seizing the unfortunate doctor by the leg and the back of his neck, and holding him suspended over the whale in his Herculean grasp. "I've a good mind to give you an overboard bunk on this whale, just to show you the difference between a cook's berth and a boatsteerer's."
"O Lord!" gasped the cook, when he was released, and once more found soundings with his feet on the deck, "you'm pretty strong one way, anyhow. Well, now, Jeff, how much did you ever see a whale make?"
"Didn't say nothin' bout sparm whale. No, a right whale; the first voyage I went on Pattygoney."
"Well, I seen one make a hund'ed and fifteen barrels, that's the most. Now, here comes Cooper. Got his pipe loaded, too. I'll bet he's seen bigger one than that. Ask him now."
The boys began to rally to a focus along the starboard-waist, as they saw the cooper coming forward.
"Cooper," said I, "where's your fiddle to-night? Are you going to fetch her up?"
"No, guess not to-night. Plenty of work for all of us to-morrow without shaking a leg over night."