ONE:"That wasn't a circumstance," he remarked, "to the great whale that used to hang around the Philippine Islands. He was reckoned to be a king, as all the other whales took off their hats to him, and used to get down on their front knees when he came around. His skin was like leather, and he was stuck so full of harpoons that he looked like a porcupine under a magnifying-glass. Every ship that saw him used to put an iron into him, and I reckon you could get up a good history of the whale-fishery if you could read the ships' names on all of them irons. Lots of whalers fought with him, but he always came out first best. Captain Sammis of the Ananias had the closest acquaintance with him, and the way he tells it is this:
TWO:Then, while still the industrious press-cutters had not yet come to the end of those appetising morsels, the packets on her breakfast table swelled{261} in size again, and she was privileged to read over and over again that the honour of a baronetcy had been conferred on her husband. She did not mind how often she read this; all the London papers reproduced the gratifying intelligence, and though the wording in most of these was absolutely identical, repetition never caused the sweet savour to cloy on her palate. She was like a girl revelling in chocolate-drops; though they all tasted precisely alike, each tasted delicious, and she felt she could go on eating them for ever. Even better than those stately clippings from the great London luminaries were the more detailed coruscations of the local press. They gave biographies of her husband, magnanimously suppressing the fish-shop, and dwelling only on the enterprise which had made and the success which had crowned the Stores, and many (these were the sweetest of all) gave details about herself and her parentage and the number of her children. She was not habitually a great reader, only using books as a soporific till they tumbled from her drowsy grasp, but now she became a wakeful and enthusiastic student. The whole range of literature, since the days of primeval epics, had never roused in her one tithe of the emotion that those clippings afforded.
THREE:It turned out that the Captain was an old whaleman. The boys wanted to hear some whaling stories, and their new friend promised to tell them some during the evening. When the time came for the narration, the boys were ready, and so was the old mariner. The Doctor joined the party, and the four found a snug corner in the cabin where they were not likely to be disturbed. The Captain settled himself as comfortably as possible, and then began the account of his adventures in pursuit of the monsters of the deep."She's my sweetheart," Arthur replied.
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