rty-four, he owned his first ship.
She was old, and cranky, and no more seaworthy than a log; but she earned
him more than four hundred thousand dollars, net, before he beached her
on the sand below the town. She lay there still, her upper parts strong
and well preserved. But her bottom was gone, and she was slowly rotting
into the sand.

Asa himself had captained this old craft, until she had served her
appointed time; but when she went to the sand flats, he, too, stayed
ashore, to watch his ships come in. When they were in harbor, they
berthed in his own dock; and from his office at the shoreward end of the
pier, he could look down upon their decks, and watch the casks come out,
so fat with oil, and the stores go aboard for each cruise. The cries of
the men and the wheeling gulls, the rattle of the blocks and gear, and
the rich smell of the oil came up to him.... The _Nathan Ross_ was
loading now; and when Joel climbed the office stairs, he found the old
man at the window watching them sling great shooks of staves into her
hold, and fidgeting at the lubberliness of the men who did the work.

Asa's office was worth seeing; a strange, huge room, windowed on three
sides; against one wall, a whaleboat with all her gear in place; in a
corner, the twisted jaw of a sixty-barrel bull, killed in the Seychelles;
and Asa Worthen's big desk, with a six-foot model of his old ship atop
it, between the forward windows. Beside the desk stood that contrivance
known to the whalemen as a "woman's tub"; a cask, sawed chair-fashion,
with a cross board for seat, and ropes so rigged that the whole might be
easily and safely swung from ship to small boat or back again. Asa had
taken his wife along on more than one of his early voyages ... before she
died....

At Joel's step, the little man swung awkwardly away from the window,
toward the door. Many years ago, a racing whale line had snarled his left
leg and whipped away a gout of muscle; and this leg was now shorter than
its fellow, so that Asa walked with a pegging limp. He hitched across the
big room, and took Joel's arm, and led the young man to the desk.

"Sit down, Joel. Sit down," he said briskly. "I've words to say to you,
my son. Sit down." Asa was smoking; and Joel took a twist of leaf from
his pocket, and cut three slices, and crumbled them and stuffed them into
the bowl of his black pipe. Asa watched the process, and he watched Joel,
puffing without comment. There was something