THREE:"I was fifteen years old when I pulled my first oar in a whale-boat; I was boat-steerer at eighteen, and second mate at twenty, and before I was twenty-one I had known what it was to be in the mouth of a sperm-whale. It is hardly necessary to say that I got out of it as fast as I could, and didn't stop to see if my hair was combed and my[Pg 62] shirt-collar buttoned. A man has no time to put on frills under such circumstances.
At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud devil!--you going to that dance?"I wont hush. You did all those things, and what was a girl to make of them except what I made of them? I put the natural construction on them. And you know it.[Pg 48]You really must do nothing of the sort, she said. There are reasons against it: I cant tell you them."Well, we saw so many things that I couldn't begin to guess in half an hour. What was it?"