She Blows! And Sparm at That! by William John Hopkins

LANCING A WHALE

SHE BLOWS!
AND SPARM AT THAT!

BY
WILLIAM JOHN HOPKINS
Author of “The Clammer,” “Old Harbor,” “Burbury Stoke,” etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PAINTINGS BY
CLIFFORD W. ASHLEY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY WILLIAM J. HOPKINS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SECOND IMPRESSION, MARCH, 1922

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

NOTE

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Clifford W. Ashley for his kindness in reading the proof of this book and in making various corrections and suggestions.

W. J. H.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Lancing a Whale • [Frontispiece]

Fitting Out •  [12]

Cutting-In •  [74]

Bailing Case •  [88]

Harpooning Porpoise • [122]

Lowering Boats • [194]

The Mate • [280]

A Nantucket Sleigh-Ride • [310]

SHE BLOWS!

CHAPTER I

I am nearing the evening of life. Many people think of me, I know, as a man who has attained to as much as one can reasonably hope for in this life—if they think of me at all. It is not so much, after all. The things I have aimed for and missed seem, at times, much more important than those I have had. But I put this thought by. Youth expects a good deal; and when one is young—and for a long time after; indeed, until a man is old—he finds hope at the bottom of the cup, enough of it to drown the taste of the bitter draught he has taken. I have evolved the theory that a man is old only when, the cup drained, there is no hope left in it. Thank God, I have not yet reached that point.

But I am inclined to reminiscence, and it scares me somewhat, for proneness to reminiscence is a symptom of age. I know that well, and garrulity is its sister. I am going to give my inclination to reminiscence play in writing of an experience of my youth. It may help to prevent me from boring my friends, and if you find this narrative becoming tedious, nothing is easier than to put the book down.

I was born in New Bedford, on Mill Street, in 1857. My father was Timothy Taycox, a ship carpenter, and a good one; a great whacking man, with a pleasant face and the neck of a bull. My mother was—well, she was my mother. I remember her always as kind and loving, and, indeed, so was my father; but my mother—well, I cannot seem to get beyond that—she was my mother. I must have tried her greatly and often, but she never failed me, and I worshipped her, so far as it is in a boy who is healthy and strong and a roamer by nature. I had two brothers, one older and one younger than myself. I might make a history of my relations with my brothers, especially the older, who used to pick upon me shamefully as long as I was unable to hold my own, but that is none of my purpose.

My first school was on North Street. My recollections of that school are vivid, and interesting—to me; but I suppose the school was not unlike other schools of its size and character. It was a small school, with about twenty-five scholars. The afternoon session was over at four o’clock, and then I set my face to the wharves, as the needle to the pole, except in the shortest days of winter. It was often warm for long periods during the winter. Two or three of us, kindred spirits, went together, sometimes running all the way, sometimes merely wandering, but always bringing up at about the same place. That was generally at the foot of Hamilton Street. Hamilton Street is a little street not much more than a hundred feet long, offset from the foot of William Street. It leads down very steeply from Water Street to a wharf, and its very name brings up before my mind a picture of a pair of heavy horses breasting the hill vigorously, dragging a low truck loaded with barrels of oil, and stirring up with their feet the powdery black dust of the street.

These low trucks were very generally used in New Bedford. The body was hung below the axles, and cleared the ground by perhaps eight inches. They had no sides, and the barrels of oil were rolled up on them and stood on end, and with the continual shaking and rattling about they wore deep grooves into the flooring of the truck. It was a new truck which was not grooved in rings fore and aft of the great beam which served for an axle.

The basements of the buildings on that steep hill were shipping offices, or the offices of oil merchants, or the agents of ships. Indeed, you could hardly go into an office from Water Street to the water-front without seeing sea-chests stacked along the walls, with the name of some ship painted on the front of each chest. Not all of the offices of owners or agents of whalers were within this area, but they were not far from it. Wing’s outfitting store, where I suppose all the business connected with their ships was done, was on Union Street, about a block above Water.

At that time and for some years after there was no railroad along the water-front, and nothing to impede the long line of trucks and small boys wending to and fro. About where the railroad is now there was usually a row of oil barrels on their sides, looking fresh and black and greasy. Gaugers were apt to be busy about them. And just beyond, on the throat of the wharf, were two structures like pens, enclosures fenced in with old ships’ sheathing which showed plainly the nail holes, the white efflorescence and the greenish stain which proclaimed the fact that they had sailed thousands of miles of salt ocean with the copper next them. These pens were on either side of the entrance to the wharf, and between them was a lane, deep in powdery black dust, and just about wide enough for a truck. Over the tops of the fences of sheathing could be seen seaweed bleached white with age, and flourishing green land weeds, nodding and waving in the wind. Under the seaweed, I was told, were barrels of oil which their owner had packed away there some years before. He was waiting for a rise in price. The barrels may be there yet, but if they are they must be nearly empty. The oil will have leaked out.

I describe these things, naturally enough, as the picture of them forms in my mind; and that is as they appeared in the summer. For I just about lived along the wharves and on the water during the summers. I remember very clearly the five old hulks which lay in the dock at the foot of Union Street. One of them was the bark Phenix. I cannot now recall the names of the others. All of them were stripped of every­thing down to their masts. Not a yard nor a topmast was left, nor anything removable without breaking them up. As I recall their condition, even the copper was gone from their sides, as far as I could see. They looked battered but mighty, and they filled me with sadness. I never ventured on board of them, but I examined them minutely and repeatedly from the wharves on either side, and I knew every patch and stain. I have sat by the hour atop of a pile to which hawsers were made fast, and I have sailed in imagination through storm and through sunny seas in those old ships, and have had all kinds of hair-raising adventures.

It was a rare occasion when any one of the wharves—at any rate the three or four wharves from Union Street north—had no ships lying beside it. There were usually two or three beside each wharf, and sometimes more; discharging or fitting or being repaired. My father was always at work upon some ship, on a staging in the dock alongside. I never tired of watching him at work, and would sit for hours on the stringpiece just above him or on the wharf opposite, while he removed from the side or the bottom of the vessel “hove-down” ribs which had begun to rot, and put others in their places; or renewed the planking on the bottom.

“Heaving down” for repairs was a common occurrence. A tackle was fastened to the mast and to a special heaving-pile on the wharf. There were several of these heaving-piles on each wharf, each firmly anchored by great masses of rock. I have seen scores of ships hauled down. The sails were always unbent—stripped—from the yards almost the first thing after a ship came in, but the yards were often in place on a vessel when she was hove down. They were braced well around, of course, or she could not have been hove over very far before her main yard would touch the wharf. Then they heaved on the tackle, and the vessel was heaved over upon her bilge, exposing the bottom on one side. I have often seen a vessel’s keel entirely exposed in this way. The exposed side of the bottom was as easily got at in this position as if she had been in dry dock; perhaps rather more easily. The carpenters worked from float stages alongside, and the ship was let up little by little as they worked up from the keel. First the copper was ripped off, then the sheathing, and then the planking, and then the ribs taken out, if any of them needed to be replaced. I have seen the bare bones of many a ship exposed in this way, and it would be possible to rebuild a ship completely, first one side and then the other, without taking her out of the water. I have no doubt that it has been done.

As long as I was pretty small I was fairly well contented to sit on the stringpiece, with the sun on my back, and watch my father; or to sit on one of the low, smooth, round-butted mooring-piles—always called “spiles” in New Bedford—and gaze out over the harbor. It was a beautiful harbor. It is a beautiful harbor now; but there seems to me to be something lacking, and less of that atmosphere of peace and serenity which I loved. Although there are still a few of the old square-riggers left there are many days and weeks together when not one of them is at the wharves, and I have not seen a vessel hove down in many years. It is no longer to be expected that, as one turns into Hamilton Street, there will appear the once familiar tracery of masts and yards hanging like a net before his eyes; not a forest of masts, perhaps, but enough of them to warm his heart. Some of the yards had sails hanging from them and flapping gently in the breeze, and on some the sails were neatly furled, but most of them were bare. A jobbing wagon would be driven upon the wharf in a whirl of the black dust, and would discharge its load of sailors, many of them natives of one of the Western Islands, or of Brava, some very black, as I recall them, with great hoops of thin gold in their ears; and their dunnage, some of it in sea-chests, but much done up in shapeless bundles in a gay colored cloth or in a sheet. They were fine, upstanding men, talking and laughing among themselves, and the familiar way in which they handled the lances and harpoons and the other boat-gear excited my envy. They had come from the home of such gentry in South Water Street, a part of the town known as Fayal. Fayal—the South Water Street Fayal—had an unsavory reputation.

These men and the white sailors who came with them were bound for the vessel with sails on her yards, for she was about ready to set out on a voyage of two or three or four years. In those days voyages averaged between three and four years in length. There was always great confusion, as it seemed to me: piles of boxes and barrels and casks, a mate or two shouting orders, sweating men getting the things aboard, some lengths of chain cable, coils of new rope which creaked as they were handled, and innumerable odds and ends. I watched and wondered until, at last, the tug came alongside, lines were cast off, and the vessel was taken out into the stream to anchor there overnight. The crew were kept busy there, stowing things, but even then there was apt to be a great litter on the decks when she was finally taken in tow by the tug. The tug cast her off somewhere below Sow and Pigs—somewhere between Sow and Pigs and Block Island—and, with a farewell blast of her whistle, turned about and came home again. But I did not witness that ceremony until I was fifteen.

When the ship had hauled out into the stream I would sit on my favorite pile and gaze out at her and at the harbor. She usually anchored in the channel near Palmer’s Island, almost in line with Fort Phœnix on the Fairhaven side. I sat on my pile and gazed at her, looking trim and seaworthy—as she was in fact—and envied the black boys with the thin gold hoops in their ears, and dreamed dreams, as I suppose all boys do, even the most matter-of-fact of them. Those dreams of mine were to come true. Instead of the whitewashed walls of Fort Phœnix and the whitewashed lighthouse on Palmer’s Island, I saw a heaving ocean under a sunny sky, and off upon the surface of that ocean I saw feathery clouds of vapor slowly rise, like the drooping white ostrich plume on Ann McKim’s hat; and the feathery shafts of vapor drifted off and vanished, and from the masthead floated down to me the melodious cry, “Bl-o-ows!” And I roused with a start, and there was nothing before my eyes but the low whitewashed brick wall of Fort Phœnix and the whitewashed lighthouse on Palmer’s Island, and the smiling surface of the harbor, and the ship waiting there.

I used to row about a good deal, when I had money enough to hire a boat—good boats were ten cents an hour—or when I thought I could depend upon the good nature of Al Soule, who had boats to let. I could not swim a stroke. It is not unusual for men who have much to do with the water to neglect to learn to swim. For a sailor, what use is it?—they ask. He is apt to be weighed down with sea boots and heavy clothes, and the weather is usually such when a man falls overboard that it is impossible to pick him up anyway. Mind you, these are not my own ideas I am giving. A whaleman needs to know how to swim, if he would save his life, and not depend too nearly upon others. It is a good thing for a boy to know, even if he is not going whaling. I would have a boy learn as soon as he can walk—or a girl either. It is the source of a great deal of pleasure.

It happened that the father of my best friend had a boat, a thirty-five-foot sloop. Naturally enough I was asked to go sailing in it whenever Jimmy went. Jimmy Appleby was the boy’s name. The sloop was rather old-fashioned, even for those days, and our going out in her was not all play. John Appleby found us of some help even when we were only ten, and we learned quickly to help in hoisting sail, and to tend sheets, and to reef, and to steer, and to do the other little odd jobs in connection with sailing a boat. I have gone out on the footropes of the bowsprit many a time when I was not turned twelve, and it had come on to blow, and she was plunging into a head sea—she pitched fearfully, with her shallow body, and a head sea just about stopped her—and I have been trying to stow the jib—not to furl it, just to tie it down any way—and holding on for my life, and have been plunged to my neck in one sea after another as she dived into them. That sloop was the champion high diver. I do not think that that experience ever imbued me with the desire to learn to swim. I was concerned only with holding on and getting my job done as soon as possible.

I have no clear recollection of my usual standing at school, except that I have the impression that I was apt to be in hot water from one cause or another. I must have done reasonably well in my studies, for I graduated from the Grammar School before my fifteenth birthday, but my active interests were not there. The memories that surge up and clamor to be let loose are those of the water-front, the wharves, the ships, the harbor, and the bay.

CHAPTER II

One morning toward the end of June in the year 1872 I was on the wharf at the foot of Hamilton Street, where I was most apt to be. My father and a gang of ship carpenters were busy at the bottom of a ship that was hove down there, and they were working on float stages along her side. I have forgotten the name of the ship. It was yet early, for in those days carpenters went to work at seven and stopped at six or thereabouts, and no man that I ever knew of the old class of artisans would leave his hammer in the air, but he would work a few minutes more, if that was necessary to finish what he was at, and they were a contented, happy lot—superior men, as a rule.

The merry sound of the mauls was not merry to my ears, for I was restless and discontented, I remember, although there was nothing that should have made me so. But I was just through school, and although my father and my mother had said nothing about my getting to work, and my father had done nothing about it—fathers were apt to do something about it in those days, getting their sons apprenticed to whatever trade seemed good to them, without much regard to the preference of the sons—although my father had done nothing about it, I say, I knew that I was expected to get to work with no more delay than was reasonable. Both my father and my mother were wise people, and they wanted me to have time and opportunity to look about me and decide for myself what I preferred to do, for my decision would involve my whole life, very probably, and greatly affect my happiness. When I had decided, I knew that I could depend upon my father to help me to the best of his ability; and that would be considerable, for my father was a man of some influence in his way, and especially in his trade. He had already helped my older brother Tom, who had chosen my father’s trade, a choice which greatly pleased my father at the time. Tom was at his ship carpentering then on one of the stages with the men, and he had served three years of his apprenticeship. My younger brother, Joshua, was already planning to go into the same trade, but my father was rather lukewarm about it. He did not say why, but I can guess now that he was beginning to see that it was a trade that was doomed to extinction.

Joshua had two years more at school, and before the two years were up he had changed his mind. He became a machinist, and went into structural steel work, and then into building steel ships. In 1917 both of my brothers were busy: Tom, at sixty-three, turning out wooden ships at Bath as fast as he could get the timber and men to put them together, and Joshua, at fifty-seven, turning out steel ships with a tremendous clatter in a sort of gigantic boiler-works. I could not stand Josh’s shipyard, while I enjoyed being in Tom’s. I enjoyed it better than Tom enjoyed having me there, for they were very busy, but the men were all old men and they could not be driven beyond a certain pace; but they came to the yard at four o’clock of a summer morning.

On that morning in June, 1872, I was making my choice, although I was not aware of it, but knew only that I felt discontented and uneasy and rather wanted to fight somebody. If Jimmy Appleby had been there I should probably have fought him—we fought often, without rancor, and without a decision—and the whole course of my life would have been changed. But Jimmy’s father had put him to work, and he was not there, and there was nothing for me to do but to wander about the wharf, watching the men swinging their mauls; and I could not see much of that, except at the bow and the stern, for the vessel was hove down over the wharf, and her hull hid them. From the other side of the dock I should have had a fine view, but I saw it so often that I did not care much for it, and I suppose I did not think of it, being taken up with my restless state of mind, which impelled me to and fro. It sent me to the end of the wharf, where I stood upon the stringpiece and looked down into the water just below. It was of an unhealthy, greenish cast, not like the green of the sea. It looked filthy, but I saw an immense school of little fish nosing around the piles of the wharf.

A whaler was at one of the Fairhaven wharves, and a number of other boats were scattered along the water-front, most of them small. I was about to look farther down toward the ferry slip and railroad station, but there lay a whaler in the stream, all ready to start; probably waiting for some of her crew, or for her captain to get his papers at the Custom House. I knew the vessel. It was the Clearchus. She had been fitting for some time, at the wharf next above the one I was on, and I had watched the caulkers, the carpenters and the riggers busy at her, each in their turn. The desire must have been conceived and born and got well grown without my being aware of it until that minute, but I knew it then. I looked at her lying there on the water that was ruffled under a southwest breeze, some great pennant flying at her masthead—I suppose it had her name on it, or the name of her owners, for I know it was white with a blue border and some blue letters in the centre—and there was not wind enough to keep it out straight enough for me to read the letters, but it would roll up and fall nearly straight down, and then unroll lazily and whip out to its length for just an instant, and drop and roll up again before I could make out a single one. She must have been waiting for her crew, for I saw only two men aboard of her, and they were doing nothing, but leaned upon the rail, which was at the height of their shoulders.

I had among my most treasured possessions two little books, in paper-covered boards, “The Eventful History of the Mutiny of the Bounty” and “Lives and Voyages of Early Navigators, with a History of the Bucaniers.” They could not be called new books even then, in 1872, for they were published by the Harpers in 1832 and 1833. They are beside me at this moment, the paper-covered boards torn and stained, and the pages dirty and much thumbed. Some of that thumbing had already been done, for I had found the tales of adventure in the books absorbingly interesting. No doubt I was thinking, as I gazed at the Clearchus over the smiling waters of the harbor, of that huge black savage of the Patagones who came capering and singing down to the shore to greet Magellan, his face painted red and yellow; or of Otaheite and its middle-aged queen—if that is what she was—a chiefess separated from her husband, and languishing for Wallis. Although of course I knew better, I always thought of those coasts and seas as they were in the times of Magellan and Wallis. I had an intense desire to visit them. But I have no clear recollection of what I was thinking of. I must have given a thought to Jimmy Appleby. I know that I stayed there, wandering impatiently to and fro, or standing at the stringpiece watching the Clearchus, waiting for twelve o’clock and praying that her captain might have trouble in filling his crew at the last minute.

FITTING OUT

The Vineyard boat went curving out in a wide sweep, another came in; a tugboat pursued its leisurely way across the harbor, and I held my breath in fear lest it should be bound for the Clearchus—with her crew of two; a lightship began to warp into the next dock above, preparatory to heaving down for repairs; the Custom House boat started out with an inspector to meet a ship that had been sighted down the bay; two catboats started from Al Soule’s for the same purpose; riggers and stevedores were busy on a whaleship in the dock next below, getting her spars up and bending on sails; the leisurely activities of New Bedford Harbor of nearly fifty years ago went on; the sun was warm and the wind light, and the smell of tar and sperm oil was heavy on the air, but in the lee of the hill the oil smell overpowered every­thing else. I liked that sickish smell of crude sperm oil. I like it yet. With that smell in my nostrils I have but to close my eyes and I see the warm, sunny harbor, some whaler lying in the stream ready to sail, the fluorescent green of the water in the dock—its peculiar color due to a mixture of oil and sewage—some other whaler lying at the wharf with her sails hanging limp from her yards, perhaps a vessel hove down at the other side of the wharf, and I heard the sound of mallets and the laughter and the talk of men on the still air.

Fifty years ago I was actually hearing these things, waiting impatiently for twelve o’clock. But I waited, for I wanted to speak to my father alone. At last I heard the bell in the Stone Church tower sound noon, but the sound of the mauls did not stop at once, but one after another; then a few strokes of a single beetle, and I heard it laid down. The men had already begun to come up. My father was the last, and I watched him with some pride, a big, brawny, smiling man. I wished I were big and brawny and smiling, like him. And he saw me standing there, and smiled more than ever, a personal smile and tender in a way.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Well, Timmie,” he said. “You here yet? I thought you would have gone home long ago. Dinner ’ll be waiting. What is it, boy? Walk along with me and tell me. I can see it ’s something bothering you.”

My brother Tom had started walking with us, but we were too slow for him, and he had run ahead. It was Big Tim and Little Tim. My father was always known as Big Tim.

I did not know how to begin, so I said nothing, but I struggled.

My father saw the struggle. He smiled again. “Out with it, Timmie,” he said.

I raised my eyes slowly, and I am afraid that tears were in them.

“I want to go whaling, father,” I blurted out.

His smile faded swiftly. “Do you?” he said. “Do you? I hoped it would n’t be that. It begins to look—or it has been looking for some time as if the whaling business would die out. It won’t be a good business for some time, if it does n’t go from bad to worse. Have you thought of that, Timmie?”

I shook my head. “I want to go whaling,” I said again.

He laughed, and then he sighed. “It ’s a bad business for your mother and me,” he said, “to have our boy starting out on a voyage at fifteen for three or four years. But if you will you will, and I ’d better see about getting you a berth.” He turned and looked at the ship in the dock below. “There ’s a vessel the riggers should be through with soon. She should sail in a couple o’ weeks or thereabouts. I might get you in there. What do you say, Timmie?”

“Where is she going, father?”

“Well,” he answered slowly, “it ’s always hard to tell where a whaler ’s going. Wherever whales promise. But we braced and strengthened her for Ar’tic work. She ’s a good vessel now, Timmie, and thoroughly braced. I think likely she ’ll round the Horn, and make the Ar’tic next season. If she has luck in the South Seas she may hang over there another winter, and not try the Ar’tic until the next year. But the Ar’tic ’s where she ’s going sooner or later.”

“I don’t want to go to the Ar’tic, father. Where ’s the Clearchus going?”

My father looked around in surprise.

“The Clearchus!” he exclaimed. “Why she ’s in the stream. Her crew ’ll be aboard in an hour or two. Cap’n Nelson expects to sail to-day.”

“But where ’s she going?”

“Going sperm whaling, Hatteras, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, probably, and South Seas. I don’t know, and I don’t suppose Cap’n Nelson knows. She is n’t going to the Ar’tic, that ’s sure.”

“If her crew is n’t aboard pretty soon,” I objected, “she can’t sail to-day.”

“Well, no,” my father said, “probably won’t. Could of course, if he wanted to, but ’t is n’t likely. Might go below and anchor, but what are you up to, Timmie? Going on the Clearchus?” And my father smiled as he asked the question, as though it were absurd.

“I ’d like to, father,” I said. “I want to go on a ship that ’s going sperm whaling in the warm oceans; to the South Seas. I—I ’ve always wanted to see the South Seas.”

My father smiled again. “ ‘Always’ is a long word, Timmie. How long does it stand for? And as for seeing an ocean—why, one ocean ’s much like another—except the Ar’tic. You might think you were out on the bay with Jimmie. And a couple of hours’ notice is n’t much for your mother and me, is it, now?—going off for three or four years?”

“No-o, I suppose not. But I did n’t know what I wanted until I saw the Clearchus out there. I know now. And I ’ll come back, father. Of course I hate to leave you and mother—”

My father laughed at that.

“Yes,” he said, “you seem to. But never mind, Timmie, I know how you feel. Perhaps it ’s just as well. We shan’t have the month of dreading it, and it ’ll be over before we know it. I ’ll do the best I can for you, but I can’t promise. Nelson may be having trouble of some kind. I ’ll just drop in at the Custom House on the chance of finding him there, and if he is n’t we ’ll run over to Wing’s to see what they can tell us. But you must n’t fret if it can’t be done.”

I almost danced with joy, and I promised not to fret. I knew that I should not fret at a thing that could not be done. I have never done that. I do the most and the best that I can, and am quite cheerful over the outcome. I was always the same; and what better can a man do than his best, and accept the result with a cheerful heart? But if we had made no attempt to find the captain I should have fretted at having left something undone and possibly lost a chance that I might have had.

We had been walking slowly up William Street as we talked, and it was abreast of Eggers’s little gunshop—where I had been used to go for my supply of fishlines and hooks—that my father virtually gave his consent and told me not to fret. The steep, short slope of Johnnycake Hill was just at our left—the Bourne Whaling Museum is now at the top of it—and the Custom House was but a few steps away, on the upper corner of the next street. I broke away and ran, looking back at my father with an ecstatic smile.

My father laughed again. “Hold on, Timmie,” he called. “Where ’you going?”

“Custom House,” I called back. “Cap’n Nelson might get away.”

So I ran, leaving my father laughing, and I waited impatiently for a few seconds beside one of the huge Doric columns supporting the roof of the portico of that ancient pile of granite. It always seemed to me as old as the Pyramids. The Post-office then occupied the first floor, but there was nobody passing either in or out at that time, and my father joined me beside the Doric column. I remember that the broad stone steps seemed not a whit too solid and strong for his massive frame as he came up.

He said nothing, but chuckled as he and I entered together that empty, echoing room, and made for the stairs. It was—and is yet, I suppose—a curved staircase of stone, and never failed to excite my wonder that it stood and performed its function, for the granite steps were without visible means of support at their outer ends. I always mounted it with trepidation, half expecting that it would give way beneath me and precipitate me into the echoing abyss below. The stone steps were somewhat worn by the feet of many captains, and my own feet had contributed.

We entered, and saw a long mahogany counter surmounted by a glass fence, behind which a man was writing, standing at the counter. He had a long, pointed beard, sprinkled with gray. He seemed to be alone in that spacious room. He was the Deputy Collector.

We started along beside the counter, which seemed endless, and my father was just opening the gate when suddenly we heard the sound of voices, as if a door had been opened. The voices stopped, and a man stumped toward us vigorously. I should say now that he was a youngish man, but then I thought him very old. He was about forty, with a close-clipped brown beard growing nearly up to his eyes, which were gray and piercing, looking out from between half-closed lids. Those eyes gave the impression of being at a great distance, and there was a spark of light in them so that they always made me think of a lighthouse with its cone of light. Even now I never see a lighthouse at a distance of three or four miles that I do not think of Captain Nelson’s eyes.

“Hello, Tim,” he said, with no apparent intention of stopping.

But my father blocked the gateway. He was a good head taller than Captain Nelson.

“I ’d like to have a word with you, Cap’n, if you have time. I won’t keep you long. Don’t you want a boy?”

“A boy? One of your boys? This the one?” He took me by the arm and made me face him. I was smiling nervously. “You want to go whaling?”

“Yes, sir,” I said as steadily as I could. “That is, I want to go if you ’re going to the South Seas.”

Captain Nelson laughed. “No Ar’tic in yours, eh? What you want to go to the South Seas for? We don’t lie ’round under palm trees and eat breadfruit and watch the surf breaking on coral sands, like the pictures in your geography books. What ’you been getting hold of?”

I squirmed and got very red, and stammered and said nothing.

Captain Nelson laughed again, and gave me a little shake and let me go.

“Well, Tim, no need to ask about any of your boys. You recommend him, I suppose?”

“I do, Cap’n. I ’m sorry he ’s taken with whaling, and that ’s the truth; and it ’s rather sudden, for he ’s only told me within the last half-hour, and his mother and I will hate to have him go off for three or four years. But if that ’s what he wants I ’d better help than try to hinder him.”

Captain Nelson nodded. “May be five years, Tim. No knowing.” He turned suddenly to me. “What ’s your name?”

“Tim, sir.”

“Well, little Tim, I guess we can find room for you. May not get the crew in time to sail to-night. Probably won’t. But you ’d better be on hand and keep an eye out for us. Bright and early in the morning, anyway.”

He nodded again, got his clearance papers, and stumped out. I stared stupidly after him.

My father sighed. “Well, Timmie, that was soon done. We ’ll be late for dinner. Come along.”

And I said nothing, but pegged along beside him down the echoing stone stairs, my elation rapidly oozing out at my finger-tips. I was beginning to think of the other side of it—his side and my mother’s—and to be more than half sorry for my haste; but what is done is done. Boys—and girls too—are thoughtlessly cruel, fortunately for them and the world.

I could not eat much dinner, but went off to my room to pack a few things, among them my two precious books. It was not a large bundle that I tied up. My father must have told my mother as soon as I had gone, for she came up to my room as I was tying up my bundle. She had been crying, and tears were yet in her eyes, but she smiled divinely as she stood in my doorway.

“Well, Timmie, darling,” she said gently, “so you ’re going to leave us. Four years is a long, long time to look forward to without you. I had hope that you would choose something else. But if you had to choose this it ’s better to have it soon over, and not to have a month of dreading it. And I ’ll say nothing but God bless you and God keep you, my precious!” She sat on the bed. “Come here, darling boy, and let me have one hug and a kiss to remember.”

So I went, and I threw my arms around her neck, and I hid my face. We stayed so for a long time, she rocking back and forth, hugging me hard, and whispering to me.

CHAPTER III

The Clearchus did not get off that day, and at six o’clock my father and I walked home together, my heart like lead. The evening passed somehow. We all went up to bed at nine, as we always did, while the bell on the Stone Church was ringing the curfew; but we might as well have stayed up for two or three hours longer, for I could not sleep, and I am sure that my mother could not. It had begun to rain, a dreary drizzle, before I finally fell asleep.

I was awakened to find my mother standing in my doorway. She was smiling, but she looked as if she had not slept well. It was already after six. I jumped up, slid into my clothes hastily, and joined the family at breakfast, but I could scarcely eat. I was glad when my father pushed back his plate and got up. I said good-bye simply enough to my brothers, and they said good-bye to me, but they did not get up. They did not even stop eating. My mother came to the door with us. Tears stood in her eyes, but she smiled as she gave me a long, close hug. I returned her hug and her kiss, but I was very near to tears and I could not speak, so I bolted out at the door into the rain after my father, and I waved my hand to her. That was another picture that I carried locked in my breast of my mother standing at the open door, in the dreary drizzle, looking after me and smiling. Mothers have a good deal to bear. I wonder that they stand it.

We did not get off until after ten o’clock. I was the first to see it—I mean the job wagon with its load of men and bundles. It was being driven on to the next wharf below—Central Wharf it was, although I did not know the wharves infallibly by name then. I called to my father, took up my bundle, and walked, rather slowly, I am afraid, around the head of the dock. The afternoon before I should have run. My father caught up with me at the head of the wharf.

The wagon was unloading about halfway down the wharf when we got there, and the men were taking out their bundles. Those bundles were of all sizes and all colors, but all were shapeless, a few in neat canvas bags, several in pillow-cases, and the others in gay flame-colored cloths, red and orange and a peculiar blue, but the predominating color was some shade of magenta. It is curious how fond those Western Islanders are of magenta. The men were grouping themselves, squatting on their bundles in the drizzle, or sitting on the rounded tops of the mooring-piles or on the stringpiece, or standing. I noticed only three of them: a great, gaunt, very black man, with thin hoops of gold in his ears, who stood impassively, his arms folded across his breast, and gazed at nothing and did not speak; a smaller man, also intensely black and with similar gold hoops in his ears, who sat atop of a pile and smiled and poured a steady stream of talk that I could not understand up to the first, and the gaunt man smiled now and then, showing a set of teeth that were sharp and of a dazzling whiteness; and a very old man, who I suppose was originally a white man, with fingers permanently bent, like talons, and very wrinkled face that looked like leather in texture and in color. He was sitting on the stringpiece, his neat canvas bag between his knees, and looking up at the two black men; and occasionally there would flit over his face a humorous smile, leaving the look of humor there. On the whole it was a quiet crowd, and merry enough, considering the weather. A man, who I found afterwards was the second mate, moved slowly around among the groups and finally stood still, holding converse with none and gazing out over the harbor.

The old man cast his humorous eye up at my father.

“Lovely morning,” he said.

My father laughed. “If you take it so,” he said, “it ’s better. After all, what does the weather matter to an old sailorman like you?”

“Not a bit. I never let it make any difference to me. But the talk of these lads,” he said, waving a weatherbeaten hand, with its talon-fingers, at the two black men, “always makes me want to laugh. It sounds like monkey talk.”

“Don’t you understand it?”

He shook his head. “Not me. I never learned Portagee. I should die laughin’ if I tried. They had none in the navy in my day.”

My father was interested. “Have you been in the navy? I should have said merchant vessels, but I did n’t think of the navy.”

The old man nodded. “Oh, aye,” he said. “It was the navy until the war was over, and I was too old for that, and then the merchant service for a couple o’ years, and then whalin’. Whalin’ ’s easier. They don’t drive a vessel so. You were n’t goin’ on this ship?”

My father smiled, and laid his great arm across my shoulders.

“No, I ’m not going, but—”

“The boy?” the old man interrupted. “Is he so? Well, can I be sort of lookin’ after him? I ’d take him under my wing with pleasure, perhaps teach him a thing or two, and try to keep him out o’ trouble.”

My father was pleased, and accepted the old sailor’s offer; and he told him of his own experience in the navy, and they swapped yarns for half an hour. The old man had been a boatswain in the navy. He was only fifty-eight, he said. I don’t wonder he put it that way. The second mate had moved, and I looked up and saw the Helen Augusta, our largest tugboat, just about to make a landing at the end of the wharf.

I seized my father’s arm in a panic.

He smiled. There was something infinitely protective in my father’s smile.

“I ’m going down with you, Timmie, and come back in the tug. It ’s too wet to work, luckily, so it won’t make any difference to me, and I guess Cap’n Nelson ’ll let me go. Unless,” he added, looking at me suddenly, “you ’d rather not have me. Perhaps you ’d rather say good-bye here. If you would I ’d understand it.”

I shook my head, and clung fast to his arm. I could not have spoken to save my life. The old sailor, my new friend, was rolling along beside us, his canvas bag over his shoulder and sticking out a foot or two fore and aft. He glanced at me and smiled, and we all trooped aboard the tug on to her upper deck, and the men filed down the ladder to a place where it was dry and warm.

We were about to follow them when we were hailed from the pilot house. We obeyed the beckoning finger, and in the pilot house we found Captain Nelson and the captain of the tugboat, a silent, sour-faced man whose name I cannot now remember, although it was then very familiar to me. Another man was leaning on the windowsill, his head outside, and one hand grasping a spoke of the wheel. He shouted some orders, pulled the bell, and we backed for a minute against a stern hawser. Then he pulled the bell once, and the chug of the engine stopped; before the water had stopped its swirling past the side he pulled the bell again, the engine chugged once more, and the bows turned faster toward the harbor. I was looking out at the wharves through a glass covered with little fine drops of mist, and I saw one of the men on the wharf lift the bight of heavy line over the top of the mooring-pile and drop it into the water as we began to go ahead. The man at the wheel pulled the jingle bell, and the engine chugged faster, and I could hear little familiar noises from the engine, as though it had settled down for a day’s work.

I was still looking out through the misty glass at the rapidly receding wharves, with the vessel that the riggers were not through with, the other that my father was working on hauled down, the stagings floating in the dock beside her; the lightship in the process of being hove down; the pens of sheathing and the rows of oil barrels; the tops of the wharves themselves, every foot of which I knew intimately. I wondered when I should next set foot on those familiar wharves; the picture blurred a little, and it was not the rain. But I was not quite fifteen, and I was going away on a voyage of four or five years. At fifteen, four or five years might as well be four or five æons. Our turning had cut off my view of the wharves, and we had straightened out for the Clearchus, and the rain was coming dead ahead.

We were drawing alongside the Clearchus, and we made fast and the crew went over the side stolidly, although some of them seemed merry enough, and my old sailor took the whole thing as a joke. Then Captain Nelson went, and my father and I. By the time I had got on the deck of the ship the captain had gone aft and was talking with the mate.

I had never happened to be on the Clearchus before, and neither had I been on any whaler just starting on a voyage. Her deck was well cluttered with all sorts of stuff, which there had been no time to stow below, and no men to do it. Some of it was covered roughly with tarpaulins to keep it from the wet, and it was shoved into corners or littered the alleyways between the great brick try-works and the bulwarks. The deck itself—where it showed at all—was covered with a film of moisture, and seemed to have sweated just oil enough to make it very slippery.

The deck of an old whaler is full of odd structures. On almost all old whaleships there were two small deckhouses aft, one on either side, with the wheel and the cabin skylight between them; and on many ships this space was roofed over, giving the steersman protection in bad weather. This was the case on the Clearchus; and there was another structure just forward of this after house. This “gallows,” as it is called, was no more than a roof covering the booby-hatch—which led to the steerage; where the boat-steerers slept—supported on posts at the corners, the posts inclined sharply inward at the angle of the standing rigging. On the top of this roof were three spare whale-boats, bottom up. There was a third structure—merely a roof—just aft of the foremast, over the try-works. The galley was in the starboard side of the after house, which may strike some as a very queer place for it, but it was always so on a whaler. It was necessarily very small, taking up less than half of that side. The cabin stairs, or companion, were in the port side of the after house.

We took refuge under the gallows over the booby-hatch, from which point we had as clear a view of the deck as it was possible to have anywhere except from the scuppers. The deck was anything but clear, and the man at the wheel saw the great butts of the masts, the try-works, and other things of a more temporary nature, but little of the deck, and of the sea before the ship and of the sky above nothing at all. There was no need for him to see either. He had an unobstructed view of the compass.

The tug took us about twenty-five miles, but it seemed an unbearably short journey on that dull, rainy morning. The silence was broken only by the soft noise of the sea, and of the ship going through it, and by the creak and groan of the hawser on the bitts and of the yards in the slings as she rose and fell gently; and by the sound of the water dripping from the yards and rigging upon the deck, and now and then a voice. Altogether it was a silent, gray, dismal journey. Coils of rope hung from the belaying pins near me, and they swung regularly with the motion of the ship. I wished that they would stop. They did not, of course, except for a moment, regularly; then they began again.

The time was coming soon when the tug would cast off, and my father must go back. We got beyond Devil’s Bridge, with the Vineyard looming indistinctly, but scarcely visible, on our weather beam. The tug whistled, and Captain Nelson came to us.

“Well, Tim,” he said, “I guess you ’ll have to get ready. It ’s too rough for the tug to come alongside, but I ’ll send you over in a boat. She ’s dropping us now.”

My father said he was sorry to be so much trouble; and Captain Nelson said it was no matter, that it would be good practice for the crew. Then he looked at me, and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Timmie,” he said gently, “you have n’t signed yet, and if you want to go back with your father I ’ll send you.”

I shook my head furiously. “No, thank you, sir,” I said. “I ’ll sail with you—if you want me—if you ’ll take me.”

How could I back out then? I should have been a laughing-stock for years, and I should never have a better chance. But I did want to go back with my father.

Captain Nelson smiled. “I ’ll take you, and you ’ll get over your homesickness when we get a sight of the sun. It ’s a dismal day to start off.”

They cast off the hawser, and backed the main topsail, and the vessel lay there with the seas beating upon her while the tug came up abeam, and lay rolling. And they came and cast loose the very boat we were standing under, and the men tailed on to the falls, and the boat was lowered until it was level with the rail; and two of the crew tumbled in to look after the falls, and my father gave me one hug, and I clung to him for a moment.

“Good-bye, Timmie,” he whispered. “I ’ll give your love to your mother. Be a good boy, and do a little more than is expected of you. Be ready to do a man’s work when you are able, and let us be proud of you when you come home.”

The men began to slack away on the falls. I watched the men slide down the falls as the boat touched the water, my father among them; and the falls were unhooked quickly, two men holding her off from the side of the ship. Then they shoved off, the five long oars took the water, and they rowed to the tug, the whaleboat rising to the seas as lightly as a cork. And they drew alongside the tug, but did not stop, and my father stepped out upon the broad rail of the tug and down upon her deck, and turned to wave to me.

As the boat came back the tug started, with long blasts of her whistle as a message of farewell to us. My father still stood in the gangway, close to her house, and waved to me. I watched her as long as I could see her; a mite—a speck tossing on the heaving sea.

CHAPTER IV

By the next morning the skies had cleared, and there was bright sun, with a light breeze from the southwest. It had begun to clear soon after midnight, and the stars had come out one by one, with drifts of ragged scud flying over. I had not seen it, but I was sleeping soundly, after some miserable hours, for I was a very homesick boy. Mother and father—even brothers—and home never seemed so dear or so far away, and I seemed to be cut off from them completely. I had no pangs of seasickness, either then or later, for which I suppose I should be thankful; but I did not give that matter a single thought, as far as I can remember. I suppose my mind was too thoroughly taken up with its own wretchedness to worry about a possible wretchedness of body. And a full realization of my wretched and miserable state came upon me the instant I was fully awake, with a distinct stab at my heart. A few tears trickled from my eyes, and my heart was like lead until I stepped out upon deck and saw the sun and a quiet sea, misty about the horizon, and the bark making her way through it under easy sail, rolling a very little, lazily, and the men, barefooted, scrubbing the decks as clean as might be of their coating of oil with the water standing upon it in little separate drops, like dew. I know the deck had a queer, greasy, frosty look, and fairly large drops had gathered and stood up, little smooth hills, about two or three inches apart. The water from the hose and the men with their swabs made these hills disappear like magic, together with the frosty look of the deck. Tarpaulins in irregular heaps still covered piles of stuff here and there on the deck, which the men avoided as well as they could.

One of the men swabbing the deck was my old friend the old navy man, whose name I found was Peter Bottom. The two very black men with gold hoops in their ears were there too, the tall one as silent and dignified as ever, but working well, and the shorter one gay and garrulous, but seldom evoking from the other as much as a smile. What these men’s real names were I never knew, and it does not matter what they were. The tall one always went by the name of Tony, and the shorter one by the name of Man’el.

Peter Bottom looked up at me, and smiled and winked, and worked nearer with his swab. There was a quarterdeck on the old Clearchus, and a break in the deck with one low step up to the part covered by the after house. I was standing on that step and leaning against the house, for I did not want to get into the water that was flowing so freely. When Peter had worked near enough, he told me in low tones that if I would hunt him up later he would impart some information that might be useful and the beginning of my education.

The men were busy nearly all day getting the decks reasonably clear, and the stuff stowed below, and it was not until late in the afternoon that I found Peter Bottom standing by the windlass, gazing out to the eastward. The wind was light, as it had been all day, and it looked very quiet and peaceful out there, with a grayish haze all along the horizon. The water toward the west, on the weather side, was too bright to look at with comfort. There was still a very slight heave of the sea left from the night before. Many of the crew were standing about, or sitting on the forecastle, but they were not saying much.

Peter looked up as I approached. He had a sort of permanent smile on his face, a pleasant, humorous expression of perpetual amusement. This deepened to a personal smile when he saw me.

“Here you are, my lad,” he said. “I was just thinking about you, and that I ’d have to go after you if I could contrive a way. Now to begin at the beginning, what might your name be?”

“Tim,” I answered; “Tim Taycox.”

“A good name,” he said. “I had a shipmate named Tim once, but he did no credit to the name. My name ’s Peter Bottom.” That was how I found out his name, although I have used it already. “A queer name, Bottom, but it ’s none of my responsibility, my name. You ’ll call me Peter, and so we ’ll get rid of it. Now, tell me what you know about whaling, so I ’ll know where to begin. There ’s no sense in telling you what you know a’ready. And then you might tell what you know of ships and of sailing, for I s’pose you ’ve knocked about some in small boats, living in New Bedford.”

Now, what I really knew about whaling was nothing at all, although I had always heard it talked about, and had absorbed as much in that way as a boy can who has seen nothing but the shore end of it. So I told Peter just that, and I told him of my experiences in boats.

“What ’s your lay?” asked Peter Bottom suddenly.

“My lay?” I stammered. “I—I don’t know.”

“Don’t you know what I mean?” he pursued. “Every man on board has a part o’ the voyage—the catch—instead o’ wages.”

I am afraid I interrupted him rather indignantly. Of course I knew that, but I had not the least idea what the share of each man was. He enlightened me. First he told me that the share of the boy was one two-hundredth. That would give me, if our take of whales amounted to fifty thousand dollars, the princely sum of two hundred and fifty dollars for four years’ work. That did not seem very much, but Peter comforted me by saying that Captain Nelson was a good master, and had the reputation of making good voyages, and it was likely that I would get more than that. He told me that the owners took two thirds of the take for their share, and furnished the vessel and fitted her, and fed the crew throughout the voyage, and made whatever advances were necessary. If the ship made a “broken voyage,” as an unprofitable voyage was called, it might easily result in considerable loss to the owners, while the crew at least could not lose on it. Such unprofitable voyages were few, however. It was every­thing to get a lucky master. Captain Nelson had the reputation of being a very lucky master, and the Clearchus had always been a fairly lucky ship. Peter had satisfied himself on those points before signing, and he supposed that all the best men of the crew had been equally particular. It was easy to get a good crew for a ship and a captain known to be lucky, and often very hard to get any kind of a crew for a captain without that reputation.

He told me further that Captain Nelson’s lay was one tenth, which is the largest that was given to a captain; the mate’s one twentieth, for our mate, Jehoram Baker, was also a good man. A first mate’s lay ranges from one eighteenth to one twenty-fifth. Our second mate, Alonzo Wallet, was “nothin’ to brag on,” as Peter whispered, but he got the regular second mate’s lay of one thirty-fourth. The third mate, John Brown, had a lay of one forty-fifth; the fourth and fifth mates got a little less than that; and the five boatsteerers got from one one-hundred-and-eighteenth to one one-hundred-and-fiftieth. Five mates may seem an excessive number. I know it seemed so to me, but the Clearchus was a five-boat ship, and needed five boatheaders. How Peter found out the amount of the captain’s and the mates’ lays I never knew; possibly it was only gossip. Then he gave me the lays of the rest of the crew.

The cooper got one sixty-third; the steward one ninetieth; the cook one one-hundred-and-twentieth and half the slush; what the slush was I did not know at the time, although anybody of any intelligence ought to have been able to guess that it was the refuse from the galley. I became familiar enough with slush before I got home again, and a bucket of slush will come nearer to turning my stomach than anything else. It consists chiefly of grease, often turned rancid. Many a bucket of it have I carried to the masthead, and have applied it generously and rapidly to the mast all the way down, for I was always anxious to get that job done and to get rid of my slush bucket as soon as possible.

But to come back to Peter Bottom and the lays. The lays of foremast hands varied according to their ability from one one-hundred-and-fiftieth to one two-hundredth, but Peter’s own lay was one one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth. This was without doubt in recognition of his skill as a seaman, and his record. He was a better man than our second mate. He had sailed all the seas over and over, could navigate a vessel, and could easily have got a post in the cabin but that his long years as seaman had unfitted him for the command of men, and he was too old to begin that now. But his ability was recognized—owners were always very ready to recognize ability—and he was greatly trusted by Captain Nelson and Mr. Baker, the mate. The second mate was not a great friend of Peter’s. It is not to be supposed that Peter himself told me all this while we stood there by the windlass. He was a modest man, and he knew better than to brag about himself even if he had been inclined to. I did not add up the fractions—the lays—to see if they came out right. Probably they did not.

Our crew consisted of twenty-five seamen, including the boat-steerers, ranging in ability from Peter down to the green hands, of whom there were eight at starting on that voyage; the captain and five mates; and the cooper, the sailmaker, who could act on a pinch as cooper and as carpenter, the steward, the cook, and the boy, who was myself; thirty-six all told, enough to man the five boats and to leave six on the ship to work her if necessary. The boat-steerers are included among the seamen, but their standing on the ship was more that of petty officers.

All this time the ship was slowly forging ahead in the light air, and rising and falling lazily, and the light of the late afternoon sun was making the water to windward of a dazzling brightness, while I looked off to leeward over a quiet sea to the hazy horizon. There was not wind enough to keep the sails full, and now and then one fell against the mast and made a curious scraping sound until a puff of air drew it away again.

Peter was beginning on the sails of the ship. Now, what I knew about a square-rigged vessel was even less than I had known about the matter of lays, and I was feeling ashamed of my ignorance and rather hopeless. But as I looked off at the water, I saw, about two or three miles off, a little feathery puff of vapor rise, like the drooping white ostrich plume on Ann McKim’s hat. The feathery shaft of vapor rose lazily, and the sun shone on it and glorified it for a brief moment, and it drifted off slowly and vanished. And I watched it stupidly, and just as I came to and grasped Peter Bottom’s arm, there floated down to us from aloft a melodious cry.

“Bl-o-o-ows! Bl-o-o-ows!”

It was most deliberately given, and was a quavering, musical cry, running up and down the scale, much like a yodel. It was one of the black men who gave it. These black men always gave the cry more melodiously than a white man. They had had a man aloft all the afternoon.

That cry was music to me, and all the men were interested, especially the green hands, to whom it was as strange as it was to me.

Mr. Baker was waving his arms and beckoning, and the crews of the first and second mate’s boats were running, Peter Bottom among the best of them. The boats were still lashed at the davits, but it took only a few seconds to loose them and to begin to lower, two or three of the men in each boat beginning to overhaul the harpoons and lances and other gear. As soon as the boats struck the water, the falls were unhooked, and they pushed off from the side of the ship and lay there while the crew seemed to be busied with something on the thwarts, I could not see what, and the ship was slowly leaving them bobbing and drifting. I was just beginning to wonder about it when I saw that it was the mast and sail they were busy with. The second mate’s boat stepped her mast and spread the sail, but in Mr. Baker’s boat they abandoned that intention, and began rowing, while the ship kept off gradually on the same course as the boats.

By the time we had made our course Mr. Baker’s boat was well ahead and going strong, the five long oars dipping slowly and with a fair regularity, but with some splashing from the green hands. It occurs to me to say something about a whaleboat for the benefit of those who do not know the boats, and they must be many, for the whaleboat, especially the boat fully equipped for chasing whales, has become a very unfamiliar sight.

The whaleboat is sharp at both ends, and is built as lightly as is consistent with great strength. Its length is thirty feet; beam, six feet; depth at extreme ends, a trifle over three feet (thirty-seven inches in the boats of the Clearchus); depth amidships, twenty-two inches. It rides the seas like a cork, and the sense of buoyancy is surprising to any one who is not used to the boat. It has a centreboard, and is equipped with mast and sail, which can be set up when wanted. For the purpose of stepping the mast quickly, it has a sort of hinge to the thwart on the after side, and as it is raised, the foot slides down to the step in a guide, or channel, until the mast is erect, when the butt drops into the step. It is held in its place by stays, permanently fast to the mast near its head, above the hoist of the sail, one on each side, which are then made fast through eyes on the gunwales.

When the boat is going under sail it is steered by a rudder. This rudder is always carried, when not in use, close under the gunwale at the stern, outside the boat, of course. It is held in place by two small lines permanently fast to it, one at the heel of the rudder, the other up nearer its head, the inboard ends of the lines passing through holes in the port gunwale to cleats on the little deck at the stern. The rudder is always hung before the boat is lowered, as it would be a difficult matter to hang it in a seaway, and might consume much precious time. When fast to a whale, the mate hauls in on the upper line, unshipping the rudder, and makes the line fast to the starboard cleat; then he hauls in on the lower line, raising the heel of the rudder to the gunwale, and makes fast to the port cleat. This operation can be performed with a few turns of the hand, but many mates preferred the steering oar, which is twenty-two feet long, to the rudder, when at close quarters. A couple of sweeps with this great oar will usually lay the boat around, but with the rudder it is not easy. A whaleboat, because of its length and the com­par­a­tive flatness of its keel, and the slight purchase of the rudder, will not come about easily under sail.

When going upon a whale, a boat always goes, if possible, under sail. This is not for the purpose of saving the men trouble, although you would think that a praiseworthy purpose. It is to avoid frightening the whale, which hears the sound of oars at considerable distance, the sound undoubtedly going through the water. When the sail cannot be used, oars are used, or paddles. The paddles are used only when it is necessary to go very quietly, and there is no wind. They are usually stout and heavy, about four feet long; and when not in use are stuck along the sides, near the thwarts, and out of the way.

Oars are the normal method of propulsion. There are five long oars, three to starboard and two to port. From bow to stern, they are called harpooner’s (generally called “harpoonier” on a whaler), bow, midship, tub, and after oar. The harpooner’s and the after oar are fourteen feet long, and the midship oar eighteen feet. Those three are the starboard oars. The port oars, the bow and the tub, are sixteen feet each. Under the tub oar, by the way, seems to be the favorite place for a whale to strike a boat. By this inequality in length of the oars a pretty good balance is reached, whether the harpooner is rowing or not. Each of these long, heavy oars is handled by one man, who sits far over on the thwart on the opposite end from the thole-pins or rowlocks. When thole-pins are used the oar works on a mat laid up of small line, placed between the pins, to muffle the sound; rowlocks are matted with marline or other small stuff.

The steering oar, as I have mentioned, is twenty-two feet long. It passes out astern over the gunwale on the port side of the stern-post, through a bight of rope covered with leather, which rests on a bracket. One end of the rope forming this bight is taken inboard through an eye, and belayed on a cleat on the deck at the stern. There is a projecting handle on the upper side of the steering oar, and the steersman stands up to his work. When the steering oar is not in use, it is drawn in clear of the water, and on the boats of the Clearchus, at any rate, the handle was held in an eye spliced into a rope, which was worked in above the gunwale on the port side. This just fitted the handle, and held the oar out of everybody’s way and ready for instant use.

The boat is decked over for three feet at the bow, and four feet at the stern. The deck at the bow is sunk six inches below the gunwale, and is called the “box.” Directly aft of the box is the cleat, or “clumsy cleat.” This is a wide, heavy plank, on a level with the gunwale, in which—on the port side, unless made especially for a left-handed man—a roughly semi­cir­cu­lar piece is cut out, into the place of which will fit a man’s left thigh, or upper leg. The edges of this hole are thickly matted with yarn or other soft stuff. Into this opening the harpooner fits his left thigh to steady him when he is about to dart the harpoon, or the mate fits his when he is about to use the lance. Various sheaths are on the forward edge of the cleat, for knives, and along its top runs a loose piece of heavy line, its ends knotted underneath at opposite ends of the cleat. This is the “kicking-strap,” under which the whale line passes. There is a hatchet in a frame on the side of the boat below the cleat, where the mate can reach it easily, to cut the line; and a whaling-gun lies on a board under the cleat, at his right, fast to the boat by a line through its stock.

The deck at the stern is used for the cleats which I have mentioned, for the lines from the rudder and the steering oar, and under it is the cuddy or locker in which are carried the breaker of water and the lantern-keg and the compass and other small things with which a whaleboat is usually equipped. The lantern-keg contains biscuit—hardtack—candles, flint and steel, or matches, pipes and tobacco; all the necessaries of life. The main purpose of this after deck, however, is to provide a convenient place for the loggerhead.

The loggerhead is a miniature mooring-pile projecting from this deck on the starboard side, and continued downward through the cuddy into the keel. Its top is six inches in diameter, and it is eight inches high. The whale line passes around it on its way out, and one or more turns can be taken around it, so that the line can be snubbed as much as is wished, or can be held there. It is a frequent occurrence for the loggerhead to get so hot from the friction of the line that it smokes, and is only prevented from bursting into flame by throwing water upon the line by the bucketful or the hatful.

Whale line is a beautiful silky rope, usually seven eighths of an inch in diameter, although I have seen whale line that I thought was larger than this, perhaps one-inch rope. Old line, however, may change its diameter, becoming either larger or smaller than when new. It is of long fibre manila, flexible and soft, the best rope that can be made. In 1872 it may have been of hemp—I do not remember distinctly. It is made in a rope-walk, not on machines, and its length is therefore limited to the length of the walk in which it is made. The line has a longer lay than machine-made rope, is not so tightly laid up, which may make it less attractive in appearance to one who does not know its qualities, but not to a whaleman. I have a passion for whale line. There is an old piece somewhere among my dunnage now—about three fathoms of it. I have had it for years. I have no use for it, but I like to handle it—almost fondle it.

The whale line, without knots or splices, is kept in tubs, usually one for a length, sometimes two, near the stern. The tub oar gets its name from this. It is most carefully coiled, so that it shall run out freely, without kinks. A second length of line, coiled in its tubs, is carried by each whaleboat, and can be bent on to the first in case of need.

From the tubs, then, the line passes around the loggerhead, where the boatsteerer handles it, and snubs it as much as he wishes. It may be running out so fast as to burn his hands; and a swiftly running line not only burns the hands, but can take the very flesh off the bones, as I know to my sorrow. To guard against this, hand-cloths or “nippers” are provided, much like those worn by bricklayers, and often forgotten. The “nipper” is a patch of canvas, eight inches square, to be held in the hand without fastening, as it might take a man overboard if fast to him. From the loggerhead the line passes forward along the length of the boat, in its middle line, lying, when slack, on the looms of the oars. As each man sits well over to one side of his thwart, the middle line of the boat is left clear for it. It then passes under the kicking strap, and through a groove—the “chocks”—in the head of the stem, in which it is held by a small wooden peg or pin. This pin is purposely small and frail so that if there is any obstruction, such as a kink in the line, the pin will break instead of carrying the boat under. In the bottom of the chocks there is a small metal roller which does not always work.

The whale line, after passing out of the boat through the chocks, is taken in again, and a considerable length of it coiled up on the box—the little sunken deck at the bow. This is called the “box line.” The first harpoon is attached to the free end of the box line, the second iron to an extra piece of line, the “short warp,” fast to the box line a little way from its free end. These two harpoons rest with their points projecting over the bow and their sapling hardwood handles in the crotch. The crotch is a sort of double Y-shaped contraption, which is set into a socket in the starboard gunwale, and projects about sixteen inches above it.

The boatsteerer or harpooner rows the oar nearest the bow. When near enough to the whale, at the command, “Stand up, Jack,” or “Stand up, you!” from the mate or boatheader, he takes in and secures his oar, turns around, stands up, takes the first harpoon, which is immediately ready to his hand in the crotch, fits his leg firmly in the opening in the cleat, and makes ready to dart. At the further command from the boatheader, “Give it to him!” he darts the harpoon with all the force left in him after rowing for miles, perhaps with all his strength. The harpoon is heavy, and both hands are used in throwing it, the right hand around the upper part of the wooden handle or haft, and giving it its forward impetus, and the left hand supporting the haft toward its lower end. Then, as quickly as he can, he grabs the second harpoon from its rest in the crotch, and darts that. This is in the hope of getting two irons fast, but the second harpoon must be thrown out of the boat in any case.

Lances and spare harpoons are stowed between the thwarts and the gunwale, the iron shanks held in a little brass frame—at least, on the boats of the Clearchus—with a sliding wire to lock them in, and the wooden hafts held in marline. Lances are to starboard, and harpoons to port; and on each, whether lance or harpoon, is a wooden sheath covering the sharp edge. It is one of the duties of the bow oar to remove the sheath, and to get out the lance. He has certain other duties which are important, and which make the bow oar next in line of promotion to the harpooner or boatsteerer.

When fast to the whale, the boatsteerer makes his way aft, and takes the steering oar, changing places with the boatheader, who is usually one of the mates, while the mate takes his position in the bow, a lance in his hand, ready to lance the whale and finish the business.

A harpoon or a lance is a poor bedfellow in a seaway, for they are kept very sharp. In fact, they are often a source of danger even when out of the boat. The second harpoon has to be thrown out of the boat in any case, whether there is a chance of getting it into the whale or not, for it is fast to the whale line, and if it were not thrown out there would be trouble. This second iron, when not in the whale, where it belongs, goes jumping and skittering over the waves after the fleeing whale, ahead of the boat or even abreast of it when the boat is hauled up close, or afoul of it.

The placing of the loggerhead at the stem accomplishes three things: it gives the boat-steerer easy control of the line, which the mate, in the bow, would have no time to attend to when they were at close quarters; incidentally it avoids the possibility of pulling the boat to pieces by a towing whale in which the harpoon is fast; but the controlling reason for it is that the men can heave on the line without leaving their places, which they must be able to do to get the boat up to the whale, so that the mate can lance.

But to come back to the boats, which had been making progress according to the natures of the men in charge of them. They were no nearer than they had been at first, and we drifted on, Mr. Wallet’s boat just abeam of us. The farther we went, the farther we were behind the whales, which were wandering directly away from us. The sun was near setting, and after an hour of a losing chase, signals were made for the boats to come aboard again.

I cast another look about the horizon, and ran aft. There was nothing to be seen of whales—from the deck, at any rate—only a beautiful pearl-gray softness on the water. My dreams that night were a queer mixture of whales and home, and of my father working on a staging beside a whale in a dock, and removing several of his ribs.

CHAPTER V

We reached the Gulf Stream some time during that night. I remember that I was awakened before dawn by the heeling of the ship so that I was all but pitched out of my bunk. I sat up and held on, and heard the rain, and the sound of feet on deck, and orders shouted, and the hoarse singsong of the crew as they manned the sheets and the halliards and the braces, and the noise of the yards swinging, and the sails slatting. There was no singsong from the men aloft taking in sail. The ship was pitching and rolling badly. The old Clearchus was good at that. Then Captain Nelson went on deck, and I dressed hastily, and went out too into the pitchy blackness of a stormy night at sea.

The two men at the wheel were having a hard time of it. I took my stand by the weather corner of the after house, hugging it close, to keep out of the rain, and looked out at the wet deck, which gleamed faintly now and then, and at the shadowy forms of the men who happened to pass near me, and at the white tops of the seas rolling past. The foam seemed to shine with a light of its own. Then the ship gave a more violent plunge than ever, and I could tell by the sound that she had shipped a sea over the bows, although I could see nothing; but as she rose I heard it come rushing aft, and the next moment the water was swirling in the near scupper, and slopped up against the leeward wall of the house. I stood there for some time, until long after they had sail reduced to reefed topsails, and my feelings were a curious mixture of exultation in the wildness of the night and—I may as well confess it now, although nothing could have drawn such a confession from me then—a sneaking fear that the ship would not stand such buffeting. I thought of home, and knew very well that my mother was lying awake and listening to the wind and the rain, and thinking of me. And I knew that I was in my father’s thoughts too, although those thoughts could not keep him awake. He knew that I was taking but the ordinary risks that every rightly constituted boy has to take, and goes to meet gladly. Indeed the risk was not great. It did not seem possible that I had left home less than two days before, and that it was such a few miles behind me. My thoughts being in that direction, I decided to keep a journal of some sort, and send it home when a chance offered. The chance may be a brief one, merely a passing ship, when there is no time to write letters.

I suppose I must have made up my mind that if I was to be drowned I should be drowned, and I might as well be comfortable about it, for as it was beginning to be gray in the east, with the melancholy waste of wild waters just visible, and that sinking of the soul which always comes at such a time, I went below and turned in again and went to sleep immediately.

The next day there was a stiff breeze from the southwest, which continued for several days. If the Clearchus had been at all fast, or even an average sailer, she would have made the Hatteras grounds in a couple of days; but that was a big “if,” as my father would have said with his quiet smile. Captain Nelson, knowing her well, made no attempt to crowd her, but went on under easy sail, so that we were a long time in getting to Hatteras. We got there toward the latter part of an afternoon. Cape Hatteras, of course, was not in sight, nor even the lightship on Diamond Shoals; but there was one vessel in sight. I tried to make myself believe that I knew it for the Desdemona or the Palmetto, but Captain Nelson said that neither of those ships was there. However, he announced his intention of going aboard of her, and said he would take me if I wanted to go.

I was delighted, and regarded it as a mark of special favor. It was. Captain Nelson was continually showing me those marks of favor, although if I had not behaved myself he would have stopped very soon. But I cannot remember that it ever occurred to me to do otherwise, and if I failed in any respect it was not by intention. Captain Nelson was very easy on those of good intentions, if they were not fools, and inclined to be indulgent toward harmless mischief, but very hard on malice or slacking, and showed them no mercy. Like many another man of action and results he had little patience with a fool. I think he blamed himself for this, and regarded it as a weakness, although he never said anything to me about it. I sympathize with him. All my life I have never been able to abide a fool, and there are many kinds; and I have been aware that it is a fault of character, and that I should have patience with them, for they cannot help their condition. But I have never been without faults, thank God, although I suppose that I was a good boy, on the whole. And I suppose that I should be ashamed of that, too, but I am not, and I never was. I do not believe that I ever thought about it.

Captain Nelson was going over for a “gam.” Now a gam is nothing more nor less than a gossip: each gives the other what news he has, the gossip of home from the outbound captain, and from the inbound the gossip of whales and their ways, and news of whalers and captains that he has met, the number of barrels of oil that the George and Susan has taken, the accident to the Addison, the men that the Gosnold lost by a fighting whale on the Carroll grounds, and any other items of interest that he can remember. The two captains, before they get through, may be telling anecdotes of other whalemen or of whales, or they may be talking of home or of Nantucket and Old Ma’am Hackett’s garden. They may have something hot and glasses between them, and the gam may last an hour or three hours or all day. It all depends upon the men. Two captains have been known to spend all day gamming, and to turn up again in the morning for more of it, but such an abuse of the practice is very rare. The gam has its useful purpose as well as its pleasant one—although any pleasant purpose is useful. The outbound captain gets the most out of it, the news of ships and of men, but most of all, the news of whales, and how they are running that season, and where they are to be met in plenty; much more recent news than he had when he sailed. But any really vital news likely to be of benefit to himself—a new whaling ground discovered, for instance, hitherto unknown, in which whales are plentiful—he carefully keeps to himself. The crew are not so careful, although many of them are close-mouthed.

The vessel had been cutting in, as Captain Nelson could tell without his glass, and as Peter Bottom and every other old hand could tell. I could not see what they were doing, and I have no reason to think that any of the green hands could. She was more than three miles away, and there was a light bluish haze which made it difficult to see clearly, but I got a pair of battered field glasses from the rack, and managed to make out dimly the outline of some sort of a flimsy structure on her side, the crew all crowded up by the windlass, and something bulky being hoisted in over the gangway. Captain Nelson had given me the use of those old field glasses, as nobody else wanted them. I would have carried them about with me, for I felt very proud and important at having glasses of my own; but it would have taken a dray or an ice wagon at least to carry them.

A boat was lowered, Peter Bottom being in the crew of the boat, and set off with the captain standing just in front of the steersman, his head in constant danger from the handle of the long steering oar, and his stomach from the shaft of the stern oar as it swung. He had to stand, for there was no seat for him. Whaleboats are not designed for carrying passengers. But he kept his feet and his dignity at the same time, and I felt a great admiration for the way in which he did both. I was perched up in the bow, in the harpooner’s place, and found the thigh-hole in the clumsy cleat a great convenience in keeping my own balance and dignity. Then I gazed ahead over the little sunken deck—the “box”—with its length of whale line ready coiled upon it, and imagined myself striking a whale; and I raised my arms in the attitude of a harpooner darting the harpoon, and I hurled the imaginary weapon with tremendous force—all imaginary, of course—and it sunk to the haft in the great body; and I heard a snicker, and looked around, and there was one of the mates—I think it must have been Mr. Wallet, although it was not his boat—grinning at me from his place at the steering oar, and Captain Nelson was smiling. I had already developed a cordial detestation of Mr. Wallet. I remember to this day how red and uncomfortable I got, even to the back of my neck. But I turned about at once, and stood as stiff as a ramrod with the help of the thigh-hole, and I looked ahead and I saw a great volume of black smoke rising from the try-works. Astern of her there was something in the water, with an immense flock of screaming gulls continually rising and settling again like a fountain. It looked much like the sight I have often seen up to a few years ago, off T wharf in Boston, the fishermen packed three deep about the wharf and all the men busy either unloading and weighing their fares of fish, or baiting trawls, and patches of scraps and gurry on the water, and crowds of great gray or black-and-white herring gulls screaming and dipping and elbowing for their share of the vile stuff.

We were getting near enough for me to see things clearly. The vessel’s starboard side was toward us, and there hung the cutting-stage by the gangway. Strangely enough, perhaps, I had never before seen a cutting-stage. When a ship is in port they are not in evidence, and we had had no occasion yet to rig ours. It is a simple affair of three planks, the two shorter ones butted against the side of the ship and resting on the wales. The two short planks keep the outer plank, which is longer, at the proper distance from the side. The planks are bolted together at the outer corners, and are held up by ropes running from the outer corners to the main rigging at one end, and at the other to a post rising above the rail of the ship. Most of the work is done from the long outer plank, which has bolted on its inner edge posts of iron supporting a light railing. It is somewhat of a mystery why the men do not fall off of those few inches of slippery, rocking plank, with nothing at their backs but the wide ocean. They are supposed to have monkey-ropes about their waists—usually forgotten—or a line at their backs along the cutting-stage, and they have long, heavy spades in their hands, which seem to anchor them. Sometimes they do fall off among the sharks, but they rarely come to any harm. But at the time it looked to me like a very insecure footing, and I was sure any house-painter would have rejected it with scorn.

The ship turned out to be the Palm, of New Bedford, and the captain was an old friend of Captain Nelson’s. The two stood apart, aft, for some time, watching the busy men about the try-pots. The men were stripped to the waist, most of them, and laughing and talking among themselves like children. Some were passing pieces of blubber from the hatch to the mincers; some were mincing the blubber on those pieces with heavy knives much like a butcher’s cleaver with a handle at each end; some were carrying the minced pieces to the try-pots; and some were stirring the mess in the pots or feeding the fire, with long, two-pronged iron forks in their hands. The black smoke billowed up over their heads, and copper gleamed red in the rays of the low western sun, and the half-naked bodies wet with sweat gleamed red, and there was a reddish tinge to the black smoke. It looked like an orgy of devils about the pots, and when the men came out from behind the try-works I almost expected to see their forked tails hanging down, and cloven feet.

The two captains went into the cabin, and there was nothing for the rest of us to do, for the crew of the Palm were too thoroughly occupied to give us much of a welcome. Everything was covered with oil and with huge pieces of what looked like butcher’s meat, besides the blubber. Whale-meat is red, much the color of beef, only darker, although it does not look like beef. We have recently been asked to eat it, as if that were a new idea. And the newspapers have had their short articles, or perhaps a column, carefully timed, telling us how good it is, and that it is getting to be quite the fashion at New York hotels, and that some firm in Oregon has been asked to put up a million or two cans of it. I even saw some displayed in the window of a fish market for two or three weeks; the same pieces, I judged, from their continually ripening color. It did not seem to be in any great demand. Whalemen have eaten whale-meat for a century or more. It is the meat of the right whale that is eaten. Sperm whale meat is full of oil and not edible. Once is usually enough for a man, a steak cut from the small. Even right whale meat does not seem to be a favorite article of diet, although porpoise steaks are good, and porpoises are whales.

At the time I knew nothing of the palatability of whale-meat, and I was interested only in the trying-out process. I stepped carelessly nearer, and my foot slipped on the oily deck, and I should have gone down if it had not been for a strong arm that caught me about the body; and I found myself gazing into the smiling face of Peter Bottom, and at an enormous raw and bloody jaw that was just behind him in the scuppers. It was more than fifteen feet long—the jaw, not Peter’s face—and it was armed with backward curved teeth, not close together, but spaced rather widely; several inches between the teeth. They did not look so very formidable; not nearly so wicked as a shark’s, and the whale’s upper jaw has no teeth. But whale’s teeth were no new thing to me, although I had never seen a jaw freshly cut off, with the ragged and bloody flesh on it.

“What are they going to do with it, Peter?” I asked, too much interested in the jaw to thank him for catching me. “Will they try it out? Is there oil in it?”

“Oil in what?” said Peter, looking about. “There ’s oil in near every­thing around here. There ’d have been oil in your clothes and in your hair if I had n’t been here to catch you. Oh, it ’s the jaw you mean. There ’s no oil to speak of in it, but there ’s teeth. When they get eased up on the oil, they ’ll pull the teeth with the help of spades and a tackle. There ’s fine dentists among the crew, I ’m thinking. And maybe they ’ll cut up the jawbone, for it ’s hard and fine, and good for scrimshawing; anything that ’s too big for a tooth to answer for. I ’ll show you, Timmie, when we get some whales of our own.”

“What will you carve, Peter?”

“What will we carve? Anything you want, lad, from an ivory spoon or a jagging-wheel, for your mother to mark pies with, to a model of the Clearchus, exact in every line and rope, and all made of ivory and silk. I brought me some silk thread for just that. Or we might make a swift, to wind off the hanks of wool. One of the boatsteerers, last voyage, made one. It was a strange thing, full of joints, and could be pulled out large or pushed in small to fit, like a lazy tongs. It seemed to work fine, but there was no real beauty in it, just flat links and all; a very good machine, but no piece of work for an artist to turn out. Still, it don’t need to be so plain. We could carve the links and the shaft and the pedestal with a mermaid or two and some dolphins and old Nepchune and his car, and tip off the links with a mermaid’s head at the top and her tail at the bottom. Oh, yes, Timmie, it comes to me now that a real artist might do something even with the reel. We ’ll make one if you like. Or we might make you a cane to use when you get back from this voyage a fine, big man, and go walking about the streets to turn the heads of the girls. Oh, there ’s many a thing we can make, and—hello! Ahoy, there!”

As Peter spoke I turned quickly toward the try-pots, for it was there he was looking. The oil in one of the pots was being dipped out into the copper cooling-tank, and the other pot was almost ready. Something had happened to one of the men as he swung his dipper. The dipper is practically a pail of copper held in an iron ring at the end of an iron shaft about three feet long; and on the end of this shaft is a long sapling handle. I did not know, at the time, what had happened, but I found, afterwards, that the man had hit his elbow and the contents of his dipper had been emptied into the second pot. What I saw was a thin wreath of smoke rising from the pot, with a tremendous bubbling and commotion in it, and instantly the oil burst into flame, which licked the near-by woodwork and rigging, and sent out a great volume of black smoke.

The orgy of devils about the pots became more of an orgy than ever, although the devils no longer laughed. In the weird light and the black smoke which, at times, rolled down and hid the whole thing from me, the devils ran to and fro, and there was a confusion of shoutings for perhaps a minute. Then I heard the mate’s voice bellowing orders, and the other shouting grew less, but in place of it I heard the grunting of men struggling with something heavy, or using every muscle in pulling. The whole thing seemed unreal to me, like a sketch of Doré’s for a scene in Hell—although at that time I had never heard of Doré—and I remember that I leaned back against the bulwarks and laughed to myself. Peter had left me, and I had moved clear of the jaw of the whale, but it never occurred to me to do anything to help. No doubt I should only have been cursed by the mate and by everybody else, for I should not have had the least idea what to do, and I did not even know the names of things. But it is nothing to my credit that I did not offer my blundering help, for I simply did not think of it.

At last the flame died away and there was but little smoke and that of a sickly grayish tinge, as if it were the ghost of what it had hoped to be. I saw the two captains standing together, aft, watching silently, and Peter joined me again, very black and dirty.

“A narrow squeak, Timmie,” he said. “I thought the ship would catch afire in spite of us.”

“What was the matter, Peter?” I asked. “What did it?”

He turned to me with his humorous smile. Peter Bottom always had an air of detachment in his way of looking at things which sometimes concerned him very nearly.

“Does your mother never fry doughnuts,” he said, “in deep fat?”

I nodded—and I had a sudden lump in my throat. My mother did that, and often; and her doughnuts were—but it was not of doughnuts I was thinking.

“Well,” Peter went on, “your mother would not have asked me that question. Does the fat never catch afire?”

I shook my head. “It never does when mother fries them. I tried it once, and it did. Was that the reason?”

“Just that,” he said. And then our boat was ordered away, and Peter ran.

The red sun was resting on the rim of the sea as we started back. From my place in the bow I watched it, and I lost myself. Our course was directly in the golden track that led to the sun, and whales and the black smoke of blubber and oily decks had no place in my thoughts as I saw the sun sink into the sea.

CHAPTER VI

We stood away that night, going under very easy sail. We were in no hurry, and did not want to get far away, but Captain Nelson had a prejudice against whaling in too much company. I was out at daybreak, eager and excited, and stayed out all day when my duties did not call me below. Much of the time I spent in the maintop, which I attained for the first time, my heart in my mouth as I crawled slowly and carefully up and out on the futtock shrouds. Nothing would have induced me to go through the lubber-hole. I had with me my battered old glass—a load of junk, but it was better than nothing—and I squatted there and watched for those drifting white plumes until my eyes ached and watered. Peter laughed at me once when I came down, but I went up again.

We sighted no whales that first day, although we expected to see them, and kept a sharp lookout; but the next day, having laid a course almost due south, and being then in about the latitude of Frying Pan Shoals, we raised some. I was in the maintop again, looking through my glass at the wrong place, of course. I should have done better without the glass. At the mastheads we had two Kanakas, one called the Admiral, I never could learn why. He had the most wonderful way of crying “Bl-o-ows!” that I ever heard. The cry began on a very high and piercing falsetto, sank a little in pitch, quavered and trilled for a long time, then went up again like a bugle, and ended as clear as a bell. I wonder that it did not scare all the whales within four miles, but the whales seemed to like it.

As I sat with my eyes glued to the glass I heard the Admiral’s cry begin. It startled me, for I had never heard it before, and I almost dropped the glass. I got it through my head what it was long before the Admiral had finished.

“Oh, where?” I cried. “Where are they?”

The Admiral paid no attention to me, of course, and the other Kanaka in his hoops took up the cry in the usual melodious fashion. Then I saw the white plumes for which I had been looking for a day and a half. They were directly to leeward, and about three miles off. I found them with the glass, and I remember that I was perfectly entranced with watching them. I could not see the bodies of the whales at that distance, and not much more than the hump shows above water, anyway, when the whales are undisturbed; but the spouts arose, at intervals, in a leisurely sort of way, much like the occasional spurt of steam from the stack of a locomotive at rest at a station. The spout of the sperm whale does not go straight up, but forward at an angle. And as the spouts rose, they went more slowly yet, and they spread out and drifted slowly for a moment, perfect plumes, and vanished.

It seemed to be a small pod of whales, I could not tell just how many, for no sooner did one come to the surface and blow, than another, having had his spoutings out, would up flukes and go down. No one could miss seeing that, the great flukes high in air just before the whale sounded, and the cry from the masthead of “There go flukes!” seemed wholly unnecessary.

At that time I did not know very much about the habits of whales, or about anything else, for that matter, connected with the life I thought I had elected. Whales—sperm whales, for I always mean sperm whales when I say simply whales—when undisturbed pursue their regular round of activities in an extra­ord­i­nar­ily orderly manner. They go below the surface to feed. Nobody knows how deep they go, but they go deep enough to find the squid on which they feed. Sounding whales frequently take half a mile of whale line almost straight down, sometimes more; and they often come up straight at the boat. There is no means of knowing whether they go habitually deeper than that, but the pressure upon their huge bodies at that depth is something enormous, and the changes of pressure in coming up at the rate they sometimes—often—do come up are very rapid. Deep-sea fish, pulled from that depth, are apt to be turned nearly inside out, because of their inability to regulate the pressure in their air-bladders quickly enough. I never knew what mechanism the whale uses, if he has any, to guard against the consequences of such rapid pressure changes, but he certainly does not use the air-bladder method. It makes very little difference what method he uses, or whether he has any other than his great strength, it works very well, and in a way perfectly satisfactory to the whale.

Having sounded by the simple method of throwing his flukes in the air, and pointing his body straight down, he stays down for a time which is constant for the individual whale, so far as anybody has been able to observe, and surprisingly uniform for whales in general, taking into account age, size, and sex. The time is undoubtedly determined by the reserves of oxygenated blood he has been able to accumulate in some way or other—entirely obscure to me—to enable him to close his spiracles and hold his breath for an hour or more. For a full-grown bull whale will stay down for an hour or an hour and ten minutes, and when he comes up he breathes perhaps seventy times at intervals of about eleven seconds. When he has taken the usual number of breaths, which is known as “having his spoutings out,” he ups flukes and goes down again. A female will stay down from thirty to forty minutes, and young whales perhaps twenty to thirty, depending upon their age and strength.

Whales are not always feeding, of course, and when not so engaged, and when they are feeling lively, they may amuse themselves with play, much as other animals do. The play of a sportive whale is not of a kind that I ever cared to join in. They sometimes come up from the depths at great speed, and throw their bodies clean out of the water. This is called “breaching.” Breaching may not be the play of a whale that is particularly sportive, but due to an effort to clear the body of barnacles and crabs and such-like. And they sometimes raise their flukes high in air, and bring them down on the surface again, or “lobtail,” the blow upon the surface of the water making a noise like a great gun that can be heard for a great distance.

They have other things which they do with their flukes, which seem to be endowed with a special sense of touch, like the fingers of a blind person. Indeed, as I think I have said, the sight of whales is very poor. The eyes of a whale are so placed in his head that there are considerable angles in front and behind throughout which he could see nothing if he had the best of eyes; but it is more than that. His eyes do not seem to be of the best.

I have never chanced to see any explanation of this which seemed reasonable, but one occurred to me after I had learned to swim, which I did a few years later. It is not possible for me to see outlines clearly under water, and I suppose that the same thing is true of any normal person. The reason is that the curvature of the surface of the eye is adapted to use in air. Water is, of course, more dense than air, optically as well as in other ways, and to see well in water the eye surfaces would have to be much more curved. In other words, the eye would have to be very near-sighted in air to have normal sight under water. It is of some importance to the whale to have normal sight under water, although there again is the difficulty of nearly total absence of light at great depths. But I should expect to find the whale very near-sighted, and perhaps with an eye somewhat similar to that of nocturnal animals. I do not know whether anybody has ever observed that. I never have. It is somewhat difficult to make such observations.

I have interrupted my narrative to say something about the habits of whales, for I hope that has made it evident how hard it was for a greenhorn like me to tell the number of whales in the pod from the number of spouts that I could identify at any one time. In fact, there were times when all had disappeared; but I stayed there, crouched on my hunkers just forward of the lubber-hole, with my back against the mast, and I watched those drifting plumes of vapor, and I was much excited and quite happy.

The boats had been lowered, the harpooners overhauling their irons as the boats were dropped into the water. I watched the four boats tossing in the sea astern of us while their crews were stepping the masts and setting the sails. Mr. Baker’s boat got her sail set first, and stood away for the whales; then Mr. Brown, the third mate, who seemed to have his crew well in hand. Mr. Brown was a silent, uncom­mun­i­cative man, but he knew his duties, and something more. Then came Mr. Tilton’s boat, only a couple of seconds behind the third mate. Mr. Tilton was fourth mate. Last of all came Mr. Wallet, fully a minute behind the others. I am afraid I snickered at that, but it was just what I had expected and hoped for. I hardly know why I had taken such a dislike to Mr. Wallet so early in the voyage, for he had not been unpleasant to me in any way. It must have been because I thought him a poor stick.

It was a pretty sight. The weather was perfect, a moderate westerly breeze, and bright sunshine sparkling on the water, with the four boats driving ahead before the wind and spreading out fanwise as they went, and the occasional feathery spouts in the distance. The boats looked like toy boats upon a painted ocean with tiny streaks of cotton wool foam at their bows. I was not very high above them, but the whole picture was spread out before my eyes. It would have been much better at the masthead. I looked aloft as I thought of that, with some vague idea of trying to get up there, and I saw the Admiral busy with a flag. It was a sort of dirt-colored banner, and he seemed to be trying experiments with it, hoisting it full up, then trying it at half-mast, then stretching it out at one side or at the other, or taking it in completely. He was signalling to the boats the position of the whales, which he could see very well, while the men in the boats could see them only occasionally or not at all. When the boats got near enough the Admiral put his flag away.

Meanwhile the ship was keeping off after the boats. They had been bracing the yards around slowly, for there were few men left on her besides the idlers, of whom I was one. Nobody saw me—nobody thought of me, very possibly—and I stayed crouched in the maintop and watched the boats. It did not occur to me that my duty lay on deck. Captain Nelson told me of it afterward. At the time the masthead man was the only man who caught sight of me. I caught him grinning at me several times, and wondered what he was grinning about.

The boats, by this time, had got very near the place where I had last seen the spouts, but there were none to be seen now, and all boats except Mr. Wallet’s had taken in their sails, and lay rocking and waiting for the whales to come up. Mr. Wallet was still a long way behind, for even the wind seemed to help all the others more than it did him. I had my glass to my eyes, and I saw a gentle commotion in the water beyond Mr. Brown’s boat, then another beyond Mr. Baker’s, and almost instantly two spouts arose, very close to the boats, and the men took to their oars with a will. As the whales had just come up, and had had no chance to breathe more than once or twice, to say nothing of having their spoutings out, they could not go down again, or if they did, they could stay down but a few minutes. This was just the condition the men had been waiting for, and they took full advantage of it. I could see Macy, the boatsteerer in Mr. Baker’s boat,—the boatsteerer rows the bow oar,—take in his oar, face about toward the bow, and stand up. He fitted his thigh into the thigh-hole in the cleat, took the first harpoon from the crotch, and poised it in his two hands, leaning far forward. The chance that he was waiting for came in a few seconds, and he darted the harpoon with all his strength; instantly seized the second harpoon from the crotch, and threw that as the first one struck.

I had hardly been able to see the whale, as there was but little of him out of water, and that little only an indis­tin­guish­able dark mound; but immediately upon feeling the irons in him, he raised his flukes high in air, and brought them down upon the surface with a tremendous crash. They missed the boat, for the men had been backing water with all their might, but the miss was by a small margin, and the boat and the men in it were deluged with water. Then the boatsteerer made his way aft, and took the steering oar, and Mr. Baker went forward and selected his lance. He had no chance to use it while they were in sight, however, for the whale set off for the horizon at great speed, “head out,” the efforts of the powerful flukes making his whole body undulate, so that his head was alternately entirely buried in the sea, and almost completely exposed, the narrow under-jaw serving as a cutwater. The last I saw of that boat, Macy, the boatsteerer, stood at the steering oar, keeping the boat straight behind the fleeing whale, while he tried to snub the whale line completely by taking more turns around the loggerhead. A thin wreath of blue smoke was rising from the loggerhead, and one of the men was throwing water by the hatful upon it. The boat was throwing a sheet of water on each side of her bow, almost like a stream from a fire hose.

All this hardly took longer than it takes to tell it. Meanwhile Mr. Brown’s boat had pulled hard for the second whale, a longer pull than Mr. Baker’s. They had got almost within darting distance when Macy struck his whale, and every man in Mr. Brown’s boat heard the thundering crash of the flukes on the water.

Wright, the boatsteerer, was already taking in his oar when Mr. Brown gave him the word, for he knew what to expect. It is not strange that I was in the dark as to the reasons for their actions, but very naturally I thought it all right, although it did not seem possible to dart the heavy harpoon that distance. Of course I could not hear what Mr. Brown said, but Peter told me later, and explained the actions of the whales according to his own notions—which may be right enough. At all events, they are the notions generally held by whalemen.

Wright took in his oar hurriedly—too hurriedly—scrambled to his place in the bow, and grabbed a harpoon; but the whale had been losing no time either, and the boat had gained but a few feet on him when he started. He was going under without throwing his flukes into the air, and he gathered speed very quickly. Wright threw the harpoon with all the force left in him after his hard pull, but it was a good twenty-five foot dart to the whale, which was going as fast as the boat, and Wright had not the strength. The harpoon fell short and nicked the whale’s flukes on an up stroke, serving only to increase his speed instantly, and he disappeared.

I looked around, and could see no whales. There was Mr. Baker’s boat well on its way to the Azores, with white water some distance ahead of it, marking the action of their whale’s flukes as he ran. All the others had vanished, and the boats lay still on the surface of the sea in attitudes of dejection, the men seeming to be looking longingly after the fleeing whales. In a few minutes I heard a cry from the masthead, and saw what the men were looking for. There, miles away, was a lone spout, and then another, and a third; and they seemed hurried. The whales had been swimming under water. We should not get near those whales again, and the boats pulled slowly to the ship.

What had happened, according to Peter, was this: Whales have some mysterious way of com­mun­i­cating with each other, although there may be miles of water between them. Peter did not undertake to say what the means of com­mun­i­cation was. It may have been the blow of the flukes on the water when the whale was struck with the harpoon, although whales lobtail frequently without causing alarm in their companions. Whatever the means, old whalemen maintain that, when a whale is struck, it com­mun­i­cates that fact, in some way, to the others; and they become “gallied”—frightened—and make off at once. I had seen them do so, and how could I doubt it? Of course Peter did not tell me about it at that time. He and his boat, and all the men in it, were out of sight.

I stirred myself when the boats were alongside, giving myself a shake, I remember, and waking from the trance I had been in. I do not know how I got down, but I must have thrown my legs over the edge of the crosstrees and found the ratlines on the futtock shrouds with my feet like any old hand, for I was concerned only with reaching the deck as soon as possible.

Mr. Brown’s crew were just coming over the side as my feet struck the deck. I rushed at Aziel Wright, the boatsteerer, and shot a fusillade of questions at him, for I was worried about Mr. Baker’s boat and Peter. The boat and her crew seemed to me to be as good as lost, well out of sight beyond the rim of the sea, and going strong. Wright paid no attention to me until the boat was up to the davits and the wooden brackets swung out under her keel.

When the boat was up and secure, Wright turned to me. He was a tall, lanky man, and he could not have been over thirty, although he seemed older. He had a little hacking cough, and seemed chronically tired; but he was pleasant, and already a good friend of mine.

“What is it, Tim?” he asked. “Mr. Baker’s boat? Oh, they ’re all right. We ’re running down after them now. We may sight them any time now, or it may be dark before we find them.”

“But,” I objected, “the whale was going faster than the ship. He ’d take them—”

Wright laughed. “True enough. There ’s no telling where he ’d take them if he kept it up, for he was making a good ten knots, and the ship is n’t making more ’n five or six. But he can’t keep it up a great while—twenty mile or so. We ’ll sight them, it ’s likely, in a few hours.”

“And will the whale fight when—”

“When he stops running?” Wright finished for me. “Can’t say, but ’t is n’t likely, for he ’ll be tired. But you never can tell what a whale ’ll do.”

I was not wholly satisfied. “If we don’t see them before dark, how will we find them?”

“Flares,” said Wright briefly. Then, seeing that I was mystified, he proceeded to explain. I suppose he thought that he made the matter as clear as daylight. “They ’ll burn flares now and then, and we ’ll see one of ’em, maybe more, and we ’ll run down and pick her up.”

I nodded, and thanked him. There was nothing else that I knew enough to ask him, although I was still unsatisfied, and I ran below to get it all down in my journal. At the time I made mere notes, in a fragmentary way, while my impressions were fresh. I wrote up the notes later. I have that journal by me now. As I look over the scrawled and stained pages, and read the disjointed sentences, the whole thing comes back before me as if it had happened yesterday. I sent the journal home from time to time, as I had planned to do, as long as I had opportunities, and managed to carry home the part covering the last part of my cruise. My father and my mother preserved my old journal as if it were a precious thing. I found it nearly thirty years later with my father’s most valuable papers.

CHAPTER VII

It was past eight bells when the boats came aboard—eight bells being, in this case, noon—and all hands had dinner. I hurried through my work of helping the steward, and ran on deck. There was no sign of Mr. Baker or of anything else on that limitless sea. The whale had run to leeward, contrary to the custom of whales, which usually run to windward when they can. The ship was rolling along in her leisurely way, almost before the wind, and making a pleasant and soothing noise under her forefoot and on either side as she rolled. Ordinarily I should have enjoyed her leisurely progress, and should have found some place which was out of sight from aft, perhaps on the heel of the bowsprit, on the principle that out of sight was out of mind. There I should have squatted, and gazed out ahead and fallen to dreaming, probably, until recalled to myself by a shout of “Tim! Where ’s that boy?” But I was getting anxious about Mr. Baker’s boat, and I could not understand the indifferent attitude of everybody on board. Nobody seemed to care whether he was ever found or not, although I could not see, when I came to think it over, what more could be done than was being done. The ship was going as fast as she could—nearly as fast. They could have got a little more sail on her. And the mastheads were manned.

I went up forward, and stood between the knightheads for a while, but I was ashamed to ask anybody, and I gave it up, and went below to work on my journal. I could not keep my mind on it, however, and after half an hour or so I went on deck again. Mr. Wallet and Mr. Brown were walking to and fro, and Captain Nelson was standing by the starboard rail, not leaning, but swaying to the roll of the ship. I went and stood beside him, saying nothing.

He paid no attention to me for a long time, and I edged closer. He glanced around then, with an expression of annoyance.

“Well,” he said, “what ’s the matter with you, Tim?”

“Nothing, sir,” I stammered hesitatingly. “I was wondering about Mr. Baker.”

“Huh!” he said. “So was I. He ’s all right, I guess. We ’re edging down that way now. Worried?”

“Well—no, sir, not if you ’re not.”

“Huh!” he said again, under his breath. “Always worried, more or less, when a boat ’s lost. But Mr. Baker ’s pretty well able to take care of himself. Nothing to worry about.”

“No, sir, I suppose not, but I thought we ’d sight him before this. That whale must have taken him a long way.”

The captain only grunted in reply. I did not like to press the matter, and I had turned away, when he called me back.

“Tim,” he said, “you can take your glass to the foremasthead, if you want to, and see if you can see any sign of him.”

There was a little crinkle of amusement about his eyes as he spoke. Evidently he thought that would be the last thing I wanted. It was. As I turned and looked up, I saw that the foremasthead meant the hoops. One man was already there, the tall, silent black man, that we called Tony. I had but just got so that I could climb in and out of the maintop without having my heart in my throat; but I was not going to let anybody know how scared I was, if I could help it, and I was not going to funk anything that the captain—the old man, as I had come to call him to myself and to others of the crew—suggested for me to do, even if he did not order it.

I turned back. “Yes, sir,” I said in a small voice; and I started.

I was an active boy, and fairly strong for my age; and I did it somehow. I think I held my breath for the last stretch, and I know I was thoroughly scared until I got there, and Black Tony lent me a hand into the hoops.

The ship was rolling more than I had thought. On deck the roll was scarcely noticeable, but at the foremasthead it was a different matter. I found that I was being carried through an arc of fifteen or twenty feet, and at first I could do nothing but hold on to the hoop. Tony did not laugh or speak. He did not even grin, but watched me and waited, thereby earning my enduring gratitude. After a few minutes I found that I did not mind the motion so much, and I put my arms over the hoop, and took up my glass, but did not put it to my eyes.

It was beautiful weather, the sun shining brightly and pleasantly warm, and a brisk breeze, under which the sea to leeward, as far as I could see, was deep indigo, with white caps here and there which flashed dazzlingly white in the sun. It seemed to me, I remember, that I could see almost around the world, although there was a curious saucer-like effect of the water near the ship. She seemed to be moving in the centre of a slight depression, a mile or so in diameter, and over that rim the sea curved away as it should. I was so taken up with the beauty and the breadth of view that I forgot what I had come there for, and I got to like the swing to and fro. It was as soothing as a hammock, the gulls screamed about my head, and I got to dreaming. I have never got over my liking for a wide prospect, and with such a prospect unrolled before me, I am, even now, as apt to get to dreaming as I ever was. I was too apt to do it then.

Something far off upon those bobbing waves must have attracted the attention of my unseeing eyes, for I came out of my dreaming abruptly; but the thing had gone. Again I thought I saw it, but it was of the color of a sea in shadow. I put my glass to my eyes, and searched the sea. It must have been six or seven miles off, or more, and I could not find it, but I saw only a panorama of curiously bobbing waves going straight up and down. Then I happened upon it again for an instant, as it crossed the field of my glass, what looked like the bow of a boat just rising over a sea. I was still searching for it when I felt a thump on the bottom of the ship, and a strange shivering of the mast. It was over in a second, but I had dropped my glass. If it had not been tied around my neck it would have dropped to the deck below, and it might have killed a man. That old glass was almost heavy enough to go through the deck, dropped from the masthead. I found myself staring at Black Tony, while he stared at me. Then he looked directly down into the sea below him.

What he saw there I did not know, but he gave a cry, and I felt rather than heard a sort of scraping along the keel, and the Clearchus almost stopped, and she began to careen. She careened more and more, and up there at the masthead it seemed as if she must capsize. I did not stop to think, but a panic seized me, and I slid and scrambled down the starboard rigging until I was in the foretop. There I stood and collected my scattered wits, and realized that, in my panic, I had come down, without a thought, over rigging that I had been very much afraid of. Although the topgallant shrouds have ratlines on them on all whalers and most merchantmen, they are pretty high up and seem none too secure to a boy on them for the first time. If it had not been for my momentary scare I might be up there yet.

I was about to come down from the foretop with much dignity and a swelling of the chest, when I saw that all hands, including the officers, were looking intently into the water astern, and naturally my gaze followed theirs. The ship had recovered her equilibrium by this time, and was going serenely about her business; but, about half a cable’s length in her wake, some huge, smooth body was slowly rising to the surface. At first I thought it was a whale which we had run into and over; but as it continued to rise, I saw that it was too big for a whale. It broke the surface, exposing a smooth shape like a vessel’s bilge, dark-colored and covered with weed, and continued to rise very slowly until the whole length was revealed, and I could even catch glimpses of the keel. It remained on the surface for half a minute, perhaps, then a sea heaved up the stem, and the hulk began to sink as slowly and majestically as it had risen. It was the hull of some vessel, waterlogged and water-soaked so that it floated some feet below the surface of the sea, rising and falling, or perhaps remaining stationary below the influence of the waves. It must have been afloat for years to be so covered with weed. I wondered where it had been when it met disaster; possibly on the coast of Africa, or in the Bay of Biscay, or even in some more remote seas; and how much longer would it be a plaything of ocean currents?

Captain Nelson was standing under the after house, still gazing astern, when I went to report to him. Half a dozen men, including the sailmaker who performed the duties of carpenter, and the cooper, had been sent below to see whether the Clearchus had been damaged by the collision, but the old man did not seem worried. I asked him about it, no doubt a piece of impertinence on my part.

He shook his head. “Did n’t you see where we had run over her? Did n’t even scrape off the whole of the weed. Glancing blow.”

“What sort of a vessel was it, sir? Do you think it was a whaler?”

He shook his head again. “Not a whaler. No copper on her bottom.” Then he smiled suddenly, for he had seen the whole of my performance. “See anything up there?”

I told him that I thought I had seen a boat, but I could not be sure, there was so much mirage or something.

“Looked like a boat, did it?”

“Yes, sir. Like the bow of a boat. I could n’t see it very well. It was the color of the water, and it looked as if it was cut off, but I don’t suppose it was. There was something that looked like a flag or something.”

Captain Nelson smiled more broadly. “May have been a flag or something. How far off?”

“Eight miles, perhaps. I don’t know.”

“Well, the lookout has n’t reported it, and I ’m afraid you did n’t see anything. I did n’t know but you had seen a ghost, you came down so fast.”

“No, sir—” I began. Then I felt myself growing red, my face and my neck, even to my body and the roots of my hair, and I stammered and stopped.

“Never mind. You got down quicker than you will again for a long time, and I was afraid you might have trouble. There was some excuse for you. I ’ve been scared, myself.”

“Then, Captain Nelson, may I go up again?”

“Now? What do you want to go up again now for? Nothing to see up there. See if the steward does n’t want you.”

We stood on to leeward for the rest of the day without sighting the boat. I was getting really worried about it. At sunset we shortened sail, as we did always on cruising grounds. The light sails were taken in, the topsail close-reefed, and the ship was brought close to the wind, lying to during the night, so as to stay as nearly as possible in one place. If we took any chances of overrunning the boat, there was some danger that it might be lost in earnest, while, if we kept to windward of it, there was little chance of that. I stayed on deck after supper as long as I could keep my eyes open, in the hope of seeing the flare which Wright had mentioned, but I saw none. By two bells—nine o’clock—I was so sleepy that I fell asleep halfway up the main rigging, and just caught myself as I was falling, my arm hooked around the shrouds. Men sometimes fall sound asleep on a yard, toward the end of a long watch, hanging on unconsciously by their shoulders and their legs, with an arm hooked around a stay. No officer will arouse a man in this condition, for there is great danger that he will fall overboard in his instinctive start at a command. I did not know of this at the time, but I was a little frightened at my narrow escape from a fall, and I went below and turned in at once.

I fell asleep as soon as I touched my bunk, and slept until morning. I remembered very vaguely that there was some unusual noise over my head at some time during the night, and that afterward I heard a noise in the cabin, but I did not rouse enough to wonder at it. It was only in the morning that it seemed to have any significance, and as soon as I was really awake I got into my clothes hurriedly and went on deck. There was Mr. Baker’s boat on the davits, where she belonged, and there was Peter Bottom smiling at me, and there, alongside to starboard, was our first whale, floating on his side, with his flukes toward the bow, the water about him filled with sharks.

CHAPTER VIII

The water actually boiled with sharks, feasting and fighting. There was a multitude of them, big fellows, from six to twelve feet long, and they took bites about the size of a football right out of the whale’s side. It was hard to see how they could do it, with their projecting snouts, and I did not make it out very well with all my watching. A shark would glide directly at the whale, about a foot or two under the surface, there would be the flash of whitish belly as he turned over, and he would glide on under, or turn without stopping; but there was always the neat, round hole where he had scooped out his mouthful. Two of the biggest sharks repeatedly threw themselves up on the carcass, from which, of course, they slipped off immediately; but they always left smooth, round holes behind them.

“And they take a good quart of oil at every mouthful,” said Peter’s voice at my elbow. I had been so intent on the sharks that I had not heard him come. “Those big fellows take more. Three of their bites would make a gallon of oil.”

I seized the chance to get from Peter the story of the capture of the whale. It was a short story in the telling, possibly because he saw that I was as much interested in the sharks as I was in the story; but I think Peter would have made no long story of it in any case.

“ ’T is soon told,” he said. “He ran for four or five hours, twelve knots or more at first, then ten, and then less, but faster than the ship sails. A nice kind of a sleigh-ride, Timmie. We had a good deal of trouble heaving close to lance him, for he was cunning and knowing, and managed to keep out of the way. He turned fin out about sunset, and we burned flares now and then while we pulled to windward. Raised the ship about four bells, but the sea was so high we had trouble getting the fluke-chain fast, and it was nearly midnight before we had the boat on the davits. Look at that, now! Would n’t it surprise you the life there is in a shark?”

He pointed to a shark whose bowels were protruding from a cut in its belly. The shark was so intent on feasting while the feast was good that he paid no attention to an injury which, one would think, was disabling. The intestine gradually came out, and trailed in a long, wriggling line as he swam. Other sharks attacked and tore at it.

For the sharks were not having it all their own way. The cutting-stage had been rigged and lowered, and George Hall and Miller, the boatsteerers for the second mate and the fifth mate, were stationed on it with sharp spades, and were doing what damage to the sharks they could. A shark has as many lives as a cat. An enormous shark came at great speed, and threw himself fairly upon the carcass of the whale.

“Pin him through the nose!” Peter shouted. “Pin him through the nose!”

I did not know what he was talking about, but Hall and Miller did. At the same instant they threw their spades with all their force. The aim was true, and while the shark was still wriggling on the whale both spades struck him on the projecting snout, pierced it and went through deep into the whale’s body, pinning him there. The projecting snout of the shark is the one sensitive place in his whole body. The struggles of this shark were terrific. He thrashed the water with his tail, sending up sheets of spray which drenched Hall and Miller on the cutting-stage; then the sea receded, and his tail thrashed the bare blubber with noises like explosions. The crew quickly gathered at the rail, laughing at Hall and Miller, and at the struggles of the shark. But his struggles were not fruitless, for they freed the spades from the body of the whale, and the shark slipped back into the sea. Here his struggles were more violent than ever, and the spades quickly drew out of his nose, and he made off.

Both Hall and Miller had let go the handles of their spades in the surprise of the drenching, but there were light lines attaching them loosely to the railing of the cutting-stage. They now recovered them, and were preparing to resume the slaughter, when they were called in. Cutting-in was about to begin. Hall offered me his spade, and suggested that I see if I could not get a shark or two. I was very willing to try, as I would try anything. I did not make a success of it. I might have improved if I had had time to practise, but I was called in almost immediately. I did not become a really good shot with a spade until I had my growth and strength.

Attached to the head of the mainmast—the top of the lower mast, where I had sat in the crosstrees—were two great tackles, just alike. The blocks in each of these “cutting-tackles,” which are used to strip off and hoist in the blubber, are enormous and clumsy, reaching well above a man’s knee as they rest on end on the deck. It is possible that they use wire rope now, and iron blocks, which would be lighter and less clumsy, but wire rope and iron blocks were not used, in my time, for any such purpose. The gangway, from which two men were taking out the removable section of bulwarks, is forward of the mainmast. As all the blubber is hoisted in at the gangway, it is desirable that the pull of the tackles shall be in line with the gangway. Each of the falls, therefore, ran through a loop or eye in a large cable running to the foremast; and by hauling in on this cable the tackle could be pulled forward to a point over the line of the gangway.

As I came inboard I met the men carrying these heavy, clumsy blocks to the side, two men to each block, and staggering at that; and the artists who were to do the cutting were waiting for me to get off the stage. These artists were the mates, four of the five. The Clearchus was a five-boat ship, and had five mates to head her five boats. The fifth mate was named Snow, a little man, but of tremendous energy. Each of the four mates carried his spade, and as soon as they had reached their places on the stage the cutting-in began.

The whaling-spade is perhaps the implement most used in whaling, and for a surprising variety of purposes, but its primary purpose is for cutting. Spades are made in many sizes and shapes, or the shape of a spade may be changed by continual sharpening, or to suit the individual taste of the user. The typical blade is usually about four inches wide and a foot or so in length, with straight sides, and, normally, a straight edge. It tapers in thickness from half an inch or more at the top of the blade to about an eighth of an inch on the line where grinding off for the edge begins; but in an old spade which has been much ground, this line is not definite or distinct, and such a spade is more like an old axe-head. Indeed, the spade is much like an axe designed to do its cutting by being pushed or thrown endwise instead of swung. Above the head of the spade is the socket for the handle, and the socket and the head are connected by a shank which may be several feet long, or may be reduced almost to nothing.

When spades are used for the purpose for which they are intended, they must be kept very sharp, and the grindstone is always in service on deck. A blow upon a bone destroys the edge of the spade, and mates are usually careful to avoid the bones; but the cutting-in is often done in a heaving sea, by a man on a single plank which may not heave in time with the body of the whale, and the spade is heavy, with a flexible sapling handle perhaps eighteen feet long, and he may not be able to see what he is cutting, three or four feet within the body of the whale; when the head is being cut off, for instance, or when cutting between the junk and the skull. Accidents will happen to the best of us. Then he throws his spade inboard, and roars for a sharp one.