Heavens! I was only fourteen, and had never been on the ocean in my life.

I could only listen to the two sea-dogs, and show my manhood by drinking with them, fairly and squarely, drink and drink.
The liquor worked its will with me; the talk of Scotty and the harpooner poured through the pent space of the Idler's cabin and through my brain like great gusts of wide, free wind; and in imagination I lived my years to come and rocked over the wild, mad, glorious world on multitudinous adventures.
We unbent.

Our inhibitions and taciturnities vanished.

We were as if we had known each other for years and years, and we pledged ourselves to years of future voyagings together.

The harpooner told of misadventures and secret shames.