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CAPTAIN HUBBELL DECLINES TO GO WHALING.
The most impatient person on board the Dipsey was Captain Jim Hubbell.
Sarah Block was also very anxious to go home as soon as matters could be arranged for the return journey, and she talked a great deal of the terrible fate which would be sure to overtake them if they should be so unfortunate as to stay until the season of the arctic night; but, after all, she was not as impatient as Captain Hubbell.

She simply wanted to go home; but he not only greatly desired to return to his wife and family, but he wanted to do something else before he started south; he wanted to go whaling.

He considered himself the only man in the whole world who had a chance to go whaling, and he chafed as he thought of the hindrances which Mr.Gibbs was continually placing in the way of this, the grandest of all sports.
Mr.Gibbs was a mild man, and rather a quiet one; but he thoroughly understood the importance of the investigations he was pursuing in the polar sea, and placed full value upon the opportunity which had come to him of examining the wonders of a region hitherto locked up from civilized man.

Captain Hubbell was astonished to find that Mr.Gibbs was as hard and unyielding as an iceberg during his explorations and soundings.