"Well now, I do think, messmates, that we should ax the mate to make a note o' that in the log, for it's not often that Tom Lokins takes to thinkin'." There was a laugh at this, but Tom, turning with a look of contempt to the man who interrupted him, replied: "I'll tell you wot it is, Bill Blunt, if all the thoughts that _you_ think, and especially the jokes that you utter, wos put down in the log, they'd be so heavy that I do believe they would sink the ship!" "Well, well," cried Bill, joining in the laugh against himself, "if they did, _your_ jokes would be so light and triflin' that I do believe they'd float her again.

But what have you been a-thinkin' of, Tom ?" "I've been thinkin'," said Tom slowly, "that if a whale makes his breakfast entirely off them little things that you can hardly see when you get 'em into a tumbler--I forget how the captain calls 'em--wot a _tree-mendous_ heap of 'em he must eat in the course of a year!" "Thousands of 'em, I suppose," said one of the men.
"Thousands!" cried Tom, "I should rather say billions of them." "How much is billions, mate ?" enquired Bill.
"I don't know," answered Tom.

"Never could find out.

You see it's heaps upon heaps of thousands, for the thousands come first and the billions afterwards; but when I've thought uncommon hard, for a long spell at a time, I always get confused, because millions comes in between, d'ye see, and that's puzzlin'." "I think I could give you some notion about these things," said Fred Borders, who had been quietly listening all the time, but never putting in a word, for, as I have said, Fred was a modest bashful man and seldom spoke much.

But we had all come to notice that when Fred spoke, he had always something to say worth hearing; and when he did speak he spoke out boldly enough.