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So the four captains betook themselves to the porch, two of them seating themselves on the little bench on one side of the door, and two of them on the little bench on the other side of the door, and lighted their pipes.

“Shall we clear off the table and wash up the dishes,” said Dorcas, “or wait until they are gone?”

“We will wait until they are gone,” said the widow, “for now that they are here we might as well have a bit of a chat with them. When a sailorman lights his pipe he is generally willin’ to talk, but when he is eatin’ you can’t get a word out of him.”

Without thinking it necessary to ask permission, for the house belonged to her, the Widow Ducket brought a chair and put it in the hall close to the open front door, and Dorcas brought another chair and seated herself by the side of the widow.

“Do all you sailormen belong down there at the bay?” asked Mrs. Ducket; thus the conversation began, and in a few minutes it had reached a point at which Captain Bird thought it proper to say that a great many strange things happen to seamen sailing on the sea which lands-people never dream of.

“Such as anything in particular?” asked the widow, at which remark Dorcas clasped her hands in expec
tancy.

At this question each of the mariners took his pipe from his mouth and gazed upon the floor in thought.

“There’s a good many strange things happened to me and my mates at sea. Would you and that other lady like to hear any of them?” asked Captain Bird.

“We would like to hear them if they are true,” said the widow.

“There’s nothing happened to me and my mates that isn’t true,” said Captain Bird, “and here is something that once happened to me:I was on a whaling v’yage when a big sperm- whale, just as mad as a fiery bull, came at us, head on, and struck the ship at the stern with such tremendous force that his head crashed right through her timbers and he went nearly half his length into her hull. The hold was mostly filled with empty barrels, for we was just beginning our v’yage, and when he had made kindling-wood of these there was room enough for him. We all expected that it wouldn’t take five minutes for the vessel to fill and go to the bottom, and we made ready to take to the boats; but it turned out we didn’t need to take to no boats, for as fast as the water rushed into the hold of the ship, that whale drank it and squirted it up through the two blow-holes in the top of his head, and as there was an open hatchway just over his head, the water all went into the sea again, and that whale kept working day and night pumping the water out until we beached the vessel on the island of Trinidad–the whale helping us wonderful on our way over by the powerful working of his tail, which, being outside in the water, acted like a propeller. I don’t believe any thing stranger than that ever happened to a whaling ship.”

“No,” said the widow, “I don’t believe anything ever did.”

Captain Bird now looked at Captain Sanderson, and the latter took his pipe out of his mouth and said that in all his sailing around the world he had never known anything queerer than what happened to a big steamship he chanced to be on, which ran into an island in a fog. Everybody on board thought the ship was wrecked, but it had twin screws, and was going at such a tremendous speed that it turned the island entirely upside down and sailed over it, and he had heard tell that even now people sailing over the spot could look down into the water and see the roots of the trees and the cellars of the houses.