For other sea-matters his age handicapped him.

As Disko said, he should have begun when he was ten.
Dan could bait up trawl or lay his hand on any rope in the dark; and at a pinch, when Uncle Salters had a gurry-sore on his palm, could dress down by sense of touch.

He could steer in anything short of half a gale from the feel of the wind on his face, humouring the "We're Here" just when she needed it.

These things he did as automatically as he skipped about the rigging, or made his dory a part of his own will and body.
But he could not communicate his knowledge to Harvey.
Still there was a good deal of general information flying about the schooner on stormy days, when they lay up in the fo'c'sle or sat on the cabin lockers, while spare eye-bolts, leads, and rings rolled and rattled in the pauses of the talk.

Disko spoke of whaling voyages in the Fifties; of great she-whales slain beside their young; of death agonies on the black, tossing seas, and blood that spurted forty feet in the air; of boats smashed to splinters; of patent rockets that went off wrong-end-first and bombarded the trembling crews; of cutting-in and boiling-down, and that terrible "nip" of '71, when twelve hundred men were made homeless on the ice in three days--wonderful tales, all true.