It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows.
And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has
no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude,
that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman,
in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.
But what is a Gam? You might wear out your index-finger running
up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word,
Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's
ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word
has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen
thousand true born Yankees. Certainly, it needs a definition,
and should be incorporated into the Lexicon. With that view,
let me learnedly define it.
GAM. NOUN--A social meeting of two (or more) Whaleships, generally on
a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange
visits by boats' crews, the two captains remaining, for the time,
on board of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other.
There is another little item about Gamming which must not
be forgotten here. All professions have their own little
peculiarities of detail; so has the whale fishery.
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