At a certain point in each day of toil and duty, I reflect upon the extent to which I become more and more dependent upon the support of Sad Face Bob and his arcane, penetrative wisdom. He is easily the most supremely qualified whaler with whom I have had the honor to work, and he can also truthfully be deemed a friend to any poor soul in need of one. During supper at 6 pm this evening, he suggested to me the idea of staging an intervention for his fellow Harpooneer Flask. Sad Face Bob declared that it now seemed necessary to curtail Flask’s rum ration, for the sake of his own health as well as that of his compatriots. He then honked his horn three times to indicate the real gravity of this viewpoint. As it is strictly forbidden within company policy to forcibly deprive a whaler of such basic human rights, we would need to attempt to convince Flask to give up his imbibing voluntarily. I here attest that within 10 minutes of Bob’s gentle admonishment, Flask felt compelled, through copious bittersweet tears, to entirely forswear alcohol forever. I do not think I will ever forget Bob’s parting words upon this occasion: “We do these things to ourselves, and so it is ourselves whom we must forgive,” followed by two more brief honks. And we are indeed very proud of the 37 minutes that Flask endeavored to remain sober. Regrettably, it is now known that at 6:49 pm he subsequently partook in conversation with Second Mate Schmee, and in turn resumed drinking forthwith. Good progress nonetheless.
