ks."

"Any whales?" cried Tom, winking at me.

"Sometimes; not very often, my lad," said the sailor quietly. "They
lies up in the cold water, more among the ice. We're getting every day
more into the warm."

"I'm sorry there ar'n't any whales," said Tom. "How long might they be,
say the biggest you ever see?"

"Oh!" said the sailor, "they mostly runs thirty or forty foot long, but
I saw one once nearly eighty-foot."

"What a whopper!" said Tom, giving me a droll look.

"Sounds big," said the sailor, "but out here in the ocean, my lad,
seventy or eighty-foot only seems to be a span long, and no size at all,
while the biggest shark I ever see--"

"How long was that?" said Tom; "a hundred foot?"

"No," said the sailor drily; "he was eighteen-foot long--a long, thin,
hungry-looking fellow, with a mouth and jaws that would have taken off
one of your legs like a shot."

"Well, but if an eighty-foot whale don't look big," said Tom, "an
eighteen-foot shark must be quite a shrimp."

"Ah! you wouldn't think so," said the sailor quietly, "if you were
overboard and one of 'em after you."

"But I thought you'd got monsters out here at sea," said Tom, giving me
another of his cunning looks, as much as to say, "You see how I'll lead
him on directly."

"So we have," said the sailor, staring straight out before him, "only it
don't do to talk about 'em."

"Why?" I said quickly, for the man's quiet, serious way impressed me.

"Well, you see, sir," he replied, "if a man says he's seen a monster out
at sea, and it isn't a whale which people knows of, having been seen,
they say directly he's a liar, and laugh at him, and that isn't
pleasant."

"Of course not," I replied, "if he is telling the truth."

"Of course, sir, if he's telling the truth; and, take it altogether,
what I know of sailors after being at sea thirty-two year, beginning as
a boy of twelve, sailors ain't liars."

"Well, let's hope not," I said.

"They ain't indeed, sir," said the man earnestly. "They do foolish
things, drinking too much when they get ashore after a voyage, and
spending their money like asses, as the saying goes; but a chap as is at
sea in the deep waters, and amongst storms and the lonesomeness of the
great ocean, gets to be a serious sort of fellow--he isn't the liar and
romancer some people seem to think."

"No, but you do spin yarns, some of you?" said Tom.

"Well, yes, of course," said the sailor. "Why not sometimes for a b