The English Whalers Have Most Reason to Be Sociable, and They Are So

The english whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the american whalers, regarding the long, lean nantucketer with his nondescript provincialisms as a sort of sea peasant. But this is a harmless little foible in the english whale hunters, which he does not take much to heart, probably because he knows that he has a few foibles himself. As for pirates, when they chance to cross each other's crossbones, the first hal is, how many skulls? The same way that whalers hail, how many barrels? And that question, once answered, pirates straightway steer apart.