placid waters of the Pacific, now touching at a port to get news of the
whaling fleet, now anchoring off some island to have a talk or trade
with the natives. But all the news the sturdy old captain could get was
bad.

Bad luck had followed the whaling fleet through the Pacific that year.
The habits of the whale in changing his locality at certain periods are
somewhat curious, and afford old sailors a subject for the most wild and
unreasonable stories. The sailors, yielding to their superstitions,
attributed the scarcity of whales to the appearance of a number of
mermaids, whom the natives on various islands had reported, and the
sailors sincerely believed, had been seen and heard singing in various
parts of the Pacific that year, and under very suspicious circumstances.
The sailors had also a superstition that whales entertain so great a
dislike for mermaids as to proceed to visit their friends and relatives
in another sea as soon as they made their appearance.

Captain Price Bottom declared he was too old a whale-killer to put any
faith in the story of the mermaids. Whales, he said, had sense and
pluck, and were not to be frightened away by such fish as mermaids. He
had his deck cleared, his gear put in order, his boats' crews told off,
and officers and men kept practising and made familiar with their
duties. Still not a whale showed his head, or blew a challenge to put
their skill in practice. The bluff old captain began to feel at last
that luck had left him. Morning after morning he would loom up in the
companion way before the crew was up, gaze up at the lookout aloft, ask
the usual questions concerning the night's sailing, then shake his head
despondingly.

"Fifteen months out--sixteen months out--and not a whale killed!" he
would say. Then taking the glass he would make a turn or two of the
quarter-deck, looking here and looking there, as if to satisfy himself
that there was nothing between his ship and the horizon. Then lowering
his glass he would nod his head affirmatively, and say: "Mermaids ain't
got nothin' at all to do with it. Somebody's been a tellin' them whales
I was comin'. Whales has got more sense some years than other years.
Know when there's harpoons about as well as any of us, and keeps at a
comfortable distance."

One morning he appeared on deck in a more serious mood than usual. Tite
was officer of the watch that morning, and the old captain, after pacing
up and down the deck several time