And in return for
that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the latest
whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she
may be destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her.
And in degree, all this will hold true concerning whaling vessels
crossing each other's track on the cruising-ground itself,
even though they are equally long absent from home. For one
of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third,
and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be
for the people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would
exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable chat.
For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors,
but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from
a common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils.
Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference;
that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case
with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number
of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they
do occur there. is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them;
for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not
fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself.
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