As he walked down the ramp, the captain felt a heavy sorrow for the young man’s misfortune, but he soon put it out of his mind as his thoughts shifted to his own promising future.

About the same time, Strater had been contemplating a much bleaker outlook as he sat in a seedy bar a few blocks from the ship. The former carnival pitchman was down on his luck and almost broke. He was nursing a mug of ale when the crewmen from the Princess burst into the bar and proceeded to get drunk with all the energy they had devoted to killing whales. Strater perked up his ears and listened with interest to the story of Caleb Nye, the green hand who was swallowed by a whale. The bar patrons greeted the tale with loud skepticism.

“Where’s your Jonah now?” a barfly shouted above the din.

“Back at the ship, sittin’ in the dark,” he was told. “See for yourself.”

“The only thing I want to see is another ale,” the barfly said.

Strater slipped out of the noisy bar into the quiet night and made his way along a narrow street to the waterfront. He climbed the ramp to the lantern-lit deck of the Princess. Caleb had been standing by the rail, staring at the sparkling lights of New Bedford. The young man’s features were indistinct, but they seemed to glow with a pale luminosity. Strater’s showman juices started flowing.

“I have a proposition for you,” Strater told the young man. “If you accept it, I can make you a rich man.”

Caleb listened to Strater’s proposal and saw the possibilities. Within weeks, flyers and posters were plastered around New Bedford with a blaring headline in circus typeface:

SWALLOWED BY A WHALE.

A Living Jonah Tells His Tale.

Strater hired a hall for the first show and had to turn away hundreds. For two hours, Caleb told his thrilling story, standing with harpoon in hand in front of a moving diorama.

With Caleb’s whaling earnings, Strater had hired an artist who had painted reasonably accurate pictures on a long strip of canvas several feet high. The backlit canvas was slowly unrolled to reveal pictures of Caleb in the whaleboat, the attack by the whale, and a fanciful depiction of his legs sticking out from between the mammal’s jaws. There were images of exotic, palm-studded locales, and their inhabitants as well.

The show played to enthralled audiences, especially in churches and halls in cities and towns along the eastern seaboard. Strater sold story booklets, adding pictures of half-nude dancing native girls to spice up the narrative. After a few years, Strater and Caleb retired from public life as rich as the wealthiest whaling captains.