and leaden hours, I will rail at ye while life lasts.

Well: weeks, chronologically speaking, went by. Bill Marvel's stories
were told over and over again, till the beginning and end dovetailed
into each other, and were united for aye. Ned Ballad's songs were
sung till the echoes lurked in the very tops, and nested in the bunts
of the sails. My poor patience was clean gone.

But, at last after some time sailing due westward we quitted the Line
in high disgust; having seen there, no sign of a whale.

But whither now? To the broiling coast of Papua? That region of sun-
strokes, typhoons, and bitter pulls after whales unattainable. Far
worse. We were going, it seemed, to illustrate the Whistonian theory
concerning the damned and the comets;--hurried from equinoctial heats
to arctic frosts. To be short, with the true fickleness of his tribe,
our skipper had abandoned all thought of the Cachalot. In desperation,
he was bent upon bobbing for the Right whale on the Nor'-West Coast
and in the Bay of Kamschatska.

To the uninitiated in the business of whaling, my feelings at this
juncture may perhaps be hard to understand. But this much let me say:
that Right whaling on the Nor'-West Coast, in chill and dismal fogs,
the sullen inert monsters rafting the sea all round like Hartz forest
logs on the Rhine, and submitting to the harpoon like half-stunned
bullocks to the knife; this horrid and indecent Right whaling,
I say, compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in
southern and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon
blank Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting in Caffraria, where the
lively quarry bounds before you through leafy glades.