I have been at it, man and boy, for nigh forty years, and many a wonderful sight have I seen; many a desperate battle have I fought in the fisheries of the North and South Seas.
Sometimes, when I sit in the chimney-corner of a winter evening, smoking my pipe with my old messmate Tom Lokins, I stare into the fire and think of the days gone by till I forget where I am, and go on thinking so hard that the flames seem to turn into melting fires, and the bars of the grate into dead fish, and the smoke into sails and rigging, and I go to work cutting up the blubber and stirring the oil-pots, or pulling the bow-oar and driving the harpoon at such a rate that I can't help giving a shout, which causes Tom to start and cry: "Hallo! Bob" (my name is Bob Ledbury, you see).

"Hallo! Bob, wot's the matter ?" To which I reply, "Tom, can it all be true ?" "Can _wot_ be true ?" says he, with a stare of surprise--for Tom is getting into his dotage now.
And then I chuckle and tell him I was only thinking of old times, and so he falls to smoking again, and I to staring at the fire, and thinking as hard as ever.
The way in which I was first led to go after the whales was curious.
This is how it happened.
About forty years ago, when I was a boy of nearly fifteen years of age, I lived with my mother in one of the seaport towns of England.

There was great distress in the town at that time, and many of the hands were out of work.

My employer, a blacksmith, had just died, and for more than six weeks I had not been able to get employment or to earn a farthing.

This caused me great distress, for my father had died without leaving a penny in the world, and my mother depended on me entirely.