but look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! what does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? she has a "gam," a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about "spouters" and "blubber-boilers," and such like pretty exclamations. why it is that all merchant-seamen, and also all pirates and man-of-war’s men, and slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer. because, in the case of pirates, say, i should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. 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.