Part 2

Thus our orphan grew and waxed great. Together, without mishap of any kind, these lords of the flood skirted the southern slopes of the globe. In serene security they ranged the stormy seas from Kerguelen to Cape Horn, from the Falklands to Table Bay. Up through the scent-laden straits between Madagascar and Mozambique, loitering along the burning shores of Zanzibar and Pemba, dallying with the eddies around the lonely Seychelles and idling away the pleasant north-east monsoon in the Arabian Sea. By the Bab-el-Mandeb they entered the Red Sea, their majestic array scaring the nomad fishermen at their lonely labour along the reef-besprinkled margins thereof, remote from the straight-ruled track down its centre along which the unwearied slaves of the West, the great steamships, steadily thrust their undeviating way. Here, in richest abundance, they found their favourite food, cuttlefish of many kinds, although none so large as those haunting the middle depths of the outer ocean. And threading the deep channels between the reefs great shoals of delicately flavoured fish, beguiled by the pearly whitenesses of those gaping throats, rushed fearlessly down them to oblivion. So quiet were these haunts, so free from even the remotest chance of interference by man, their only enemy, that they remained for many months, even penetrating well up the Gulf of Akaba, that sea of sleep whose waters even now retain the same primitive seclusion they enjoyed when their shores were the cradle of mankind.

But now a time was fast approaching when our hero must needs meet his compeers in battle, if haply he might justify his claim to be a leader in his turn. For such is the custom of the cachalot. The young bulls each seek to form a harem among the younger cows of the school, and having done so, they break off from the main band and pursue their own independent way. This crisis in the career of the orphan had been imminent for some time, but now, in these untroubled seas, it could no longer be delayed. Already several preliminary skirmishes had taken place with no definite results, and at last, one morning when the sea was like oil for smoothness, and blazing like burnished gold under the fervent glare of the sun, two out of the four young bulls attacked the orphan at once. All around lay the expectant brides ready to welcome the conqueror, while in solitary state the mighty leader held aloof, doubtless meditating on the coming time when a mightier than he should arise and drive him from his proud position into lifelong exile. Straight for our hero’s massive head came his rivals, charging along the foaming surface like bluff-bowed torpedo rams. But as they converged upon him he also charged to meet them, settling slightly at the same time. Whether by accident or design I know not, but certainly the consequence of this move was that instead of their striking him they met one another over his back, the shock of their impact throwing their great heads out of the sea with a dull boom that might have been heard for a mile. Swiftly and gracefully the orphan turned head over flukes, rising on his back and clutching the nearest of his opponents by his pendulous under-jaw. The fury of that assault was so great that the attacked one’s jaw was wrenched sideways, until it remained at right angles to his body, leaving him for the rest of his life sorely hampered in even the getting of food, but utterly incapable of ever again giving battle to one of his own species. Then rushing towards the other aggressor the victorious warrior inverted his body in the sea, and brandishing his lethal flukes smote so doughtily upon his foe that the noise of those tremendous blows reverberated for leagues over the calm sea, while around the combatants the troubled waters were lashed into ridges and islets of snowy foam. Very soon was the battle over. Disheartened, sick, and exhausted, the disabled rival essayed to escape, settling stone-like until he lay like some sunken wreck on the boulder-bestrewn sea-bed a hundred fathoms down. Slowly, but full of triumph, the conqueror returned to the waiting school and, selecting six of the submissive cows, led them away without any attempt at hindrance on the part of the other two young bulls who had not joined in the fray.

In stately march the new family travelled southward out of the Red Sea, along the Somali Coast, past the frowning cliffs of Sokotra, and crossing the Arabian Sea, skirted at their ease the pleasant Malabar littoral. Unerring instinct guided them across the Indian Ocean and through the Sunda Straits, until amid the intricacies of Celebes they ended their journey for a season. Here, with richest food in overflowing abundance, among undisturbed reef-beds swept by constantly changing currents, where they might chafe their irritated skins clean from the many parasites they had accumulated during their long Red Sea sojourn, they remained for several seasons. Then, suddenly, as calamities usually come, they were attacked by a whaler as they were calmly coasting along Timor. But never till their dying day did those whale-fishers forget that fight. True, they secured two half-grown cows, but at what a cost to themselves! For the young leader, now in the full flush of vigorous life, seemed not only to have inherited the fighting instincts of his ancestors, but also to possess a fund of wily ferocity that made him a truly terrible foe. No sooner did he feel the first keen thrust of the harpoon than, instead of expending his strength for naught by a series of aimless flounderings, he rolled his huge bulk swiftly towards his aggressors, who were busily engaged in clearing their boat of the hampering sail, and perforce helpless for a time. Right down upon them came the writhing mass of living flesh, overwhelming them as completely as if they had suddenly fallen under Niagara. From out of that roaring vortex only two of the six men forming the boat’s crew emerged alive, poor fragments of humanity tossing like chips upon the tormented sea. Then changing his tactics, the triumphant cachalot glided stealthily about just beneath the surface, feeling with his sensitive flukes for anything still remaining afloat upon which to wreak his newly aroused thirst for vengeance. As often as he touched a floating portion of the shattered boat, up flew his mighty flukes in a moment, and, with a reflex blow that would have stove in the side of a ship, he smote it into still smaller splinters. This attention to his first set of enemies saved the other boats from destruction, for they, using all expedition, managed to despatch the two cows they had harpooned, and when they returned to the scene of disaster, the bull, unable to find anything more to destroy, had departed with the remnant of his family, and they saw him no more. Gloomily they traversed the battle-field until they found the two exhausted survivors just feebly clinging to a couple of oars, and with them mournfully regained their ship.

Meanwhile the triumphant bull was slowly making his way eastward, sorely irritated by the galling harpoon which was buried deep in his shoulders, and wondering what the hundreds of fathoms of trailing rope behind him could be. At last coming to a well-known reef he managed to get the line entangled around some of its coral pillars, and a strenuous effort on his part tore out the barbed weapon, leaving in its place a ragged rent in his blubber four feet long. Such a trifle as that, a mere superficial scratch, gave him little trouble, and with the wonderful recuperative power possessed by all the sea-folk the ugly tear was completely healed in a few days. Henceforth he was to be reckoned among the most dangerous of all enemies to any of mankind daring to attack him, for he knew his power. This the whalemen found to their cost. Within the next few years his fame had spread from Cape Cod to Chelyushkin, and wherever two whaleships met for a spell of “gamming,” his prowess was sure to be an absorbing topic of conversation. In fact, he became the terror of the tortuous passages of Malaysia, and though often attacked always managed to make good his escape, as well as to leave behind him some direful testimony to his ferocious cunning. At last he fell in with a ship off Palawan, whose crew were justly reputed to be the smartest whale-fishers from “Down East.” Two of her boats attacked him one lovely evening just before sunset, but the iron drew. Immediately he felt the wound he dived perpendicularly, but describing a complete vertical circle beneath the boat he rose again, striking her almost amidships with the front of his head. This, of course, hurled the crew everywhere, besides shattering the boat. But reversing himself again on the instant, he brandished those awful flukes in the air, bringing them down upon the helpless men and crushing three of them into dead pieces. Apparently satisfied, he disappeared in the gathering darkness.

When the extent of the disaster became known on board the ship, the skipper was speechless with rage and grief, for the mate who had been killed was his brother, and very dear to him. And he swore that if it cost him a season’s work and the loss of his ship, he would slay that man-killing whale. From that day he cruised about those narrow seas offering large rewards to any of his men who should first sight his enemy again. Several weeks went by, during which not a solitary spout was seen, until one morning in Banda Strait the skipper himself “raised” a whale close in to the western verge of the island. Instantly all hands were alert, hoping against hope that this might prove to be their long-sought foe at last. Soon the welcome news came from aloft that it _was_ a sperm whale, and an hour later two boats left the ship, the foremost of them commanded by the skipper. With him he took four small barrels tightly bunged, and an extra supply of bomb-lances, in the use of which he was an acknowledged expert. As they drew near the unconscious leviathan they scarcely dared breathe, and, their oars carefully peaked, they propelled the boats by paddles as silently as the gliding approach of a shark. Hurrah! fast; first iron. “Starn all, men! it’s him, d--n him, ’n I’ll slaughter him ’r he shall me.” Backward flew the boat, not a second too soon, for with that superhuman cunning expected of him, the terrible monster had spun round and was rushing straight for them. The men pulled for dear life, the steersman swinging the boat round as if she were on a pivot, while the skipper pitched over the first of his barrels. Out flashed the sinewy flukes, and before that tremendous blow the buoyant barrico spun through the air like a football. The skipper’s eyes flashed with delight at the success of his stratagem, and over went another decoy. This seemed to puzzle the whale, but it did not hinder him, and he seemed to keep instinctively heading towards the boat, thus exposing only his invulnerable head. The skipper, however, had no idea of rashly risking himself, so heaving over his remaining barrel he kept well clear of the furious animal’s rushes, knowing well that the waiting game was the best. All through that bright day the great battle raged. Many were the hair-breadth escapes of the men, but the skipper never lost his cool, calculating attitude. Finally the now exhausted leviathan “sounded” in reality, remaining down for half-an-hour. When he reappeared, he was so sluggish in his movements that the exultant skipper shouted, “Naow, boys, in on him! he’s our whale.” Forward darted the beautiful craft under the practised sweep of the six oars, and as soon as she was within range the skipper fired his first bomb. It reached the whale, but, buried in the flesh, its explosion was not disabling. Still it did not spur the huge creature into activity, for at last his strength had failed him. Another rush in and another bomb, this time taking effect just abaft the starboard fin. There was a momentary accession of energy as the frightful wound caused by the bursting iron tube among the monster’s viscera set all his masses of muscle a-quiver. But this spurt was short-lived. And as a third bomb was fired a torrent of blood foamed from the whale’s distended spiracle, a few fierce convulsions distorted his enormous frame, and that puissant ocean monarch passed peacefully into the passiveness of death.

When they got the great carcass alongside, they found embedded in the blubber no fewer than fourteen harpoons, besides sundry fragments of exploded bombs, each bearing mute but eloquent testimony to the warlike career of the vanquished Titan who began his career as an orphan.

A PORPOISE MYTH

Far away to the horizon on three sides of us stretched the sea, its wavelets all sparkling in the sun-glade, and dancing under the touch of the sedate trade-wind. Above hung a pale-blue dome quivering with heat and light from the sun, that, halfway up his road to the zenith, seemed to be in the act of breaking his globular limit and flooding space with flame. Ah! it was indeed pleasant to lie on that little patch of pure sand, firm and smooth as a boarded floor, with the rocks fringed by greenery of many kinds overshadowing us, and the ocean murmuring at our feet.

The place was a little promontory on the eastern shore of Hapai, in the Friendly Islands, and my companion, who lay on the sand near me, was by birth a chief, a splendid figure of a man, with a grave, intellectual face, and deep, solemn voice that refused to allow the mangled English in which he spoke to seem laughable. I knew him to be the senior deacon of the local chapel, a devotionalist of the most rigid kind, yet by common consent a righteous man, well-beloved by all who knew him. He was my “flem” or friend, who, of his own initiative, kept me supplied with all such luxuries as the village afforded, and so great was my admiration for him as a man that it was with no ordinary delight I succeeded in persuading him to accompany me on a holiday ramble. He had led me through forest paths beset by a thousand wonders of beauty in vegetation and insect life, showing me as we went how the untilled ground produced on every hand abundance of delicious food for man, up over hills from whence glimpses of land and sea scape incessantly flashed upon the sight till my eyes grew weary of enjoying, over skirting reefs just creaming with the indolent wash of the sea, every square yard of which held matter for a life’s study, but all beautiful beyond superlatives. And at last, weary with wondering no less than with the journey, we had reached this sheltered nook and laid down to rest, lulled into dreamy peace by the murmurs of the Pacific rippling beneath us.

For some time we lay silent in great content. Every thought, every feeling, as far as I was concerned, was just merged in complete satisfaction of all the senses, although at times I glanced at my grave companion, wondering dreamily if he too, though accustomed to these delights all his life long, could feel that deep enjoyment of them that I, a wanderer from the bleak and unsettled North, was saturated with. But while this and kindred ideas lazily ebbed and flowed through my satisfied brain, the bright expanse of sea immediately beneath us suddenly started into life. A school of porpoises, numbering several hundreds, broke the surface, new risen from unknown depths, and began their merry gambols as if the superabundant life animating them must find a vent. They formed into three divisions, marched in undulating yet evenly spaced lines, amalgamated, separated, reformed. At one moment all clustered in one central mass, making the placid sea boil; the next, as if by a pivotal explosion, they were rushing at headlong speed in radiating lines towards a circumference. As if at preconcerted signal, they reached it and disappeared. Perfect quiet ensued for perhaps two minutes. Then, in solemn measure, solitary individuals, scattered over a vast area, rose into the air ten, fifteen, twenty feet, turned and fell, but, at our distance from them, in perfect silence. This pretty play continued for some time, the leaps growing gradually less vigorous until they ceased altogether, and we saw the whole company massing themselves in close order far out to sea. A few minutes, for breathing space I suppose, and then in one magnificent charge, every individual leaping twenty feet at each bound, they came thundering shoreward. It was an inspiring sight, that host of lithe black bodies in maddest rush along the sea-surface, lashing it into dazzling foam, and sending across to our ears a deep melodious roar like the voice of many waters. Within a hundred yards of the shore they disappeared abruptly, as if an invisible line had there been drawn, and presently we saw them leisurely departing eastward, as though, playtime over, they had now resumed the normal flow of everyday duties.

While I lay quietly wondering over the amazing display I had just witnessed, I was almost startled to hear my companion speak, for he seldom did so unless spoken to first. (I translate.) “The great game of the sea-pigs that we have just seen brings back to my memory an old story which is still told among our people, but one which we are trying hard to forget with all the others, because they are of the evil days, and stir up in our children those feelings that we have fought so long to bury beyond resurrection. This story, however, is harmless enough, although I should neither tell it to, or listen to it from, one of mine own people. Long ago when we worshipped the old cruel gods, and my ancestors were chief priests of that worship, holding all the people under their rule in utter terror and subjection, our chief, yes, our only, business besides religion was war. Our women were slaves who were only born for our service, and it is not easy now to understand what our feelings then were toward the sex to whom we are now so tender. Our only talk was of the service of the gods and of war, which indeed was generally undertaken for some religious reason, more often than not to provide human victims for sacrifice. In one of these constantly recurring wars the men of Tonga-tabu--of course each group of these islands was then independent of the others--made a grand raid upon Hapai. They were helped by some strangers, who had been washed ashore from some other islands to the northward, to build bigger and better war-canoes than had ever before been seen, for our people were never famous for canoe-building. They kept their plans so secret that when at daybreak one morning the news ran round Hapai that a whole fleet of war-canoes were nearing the shore, our people were like a school of flying-fish into the midst of which some dolphin has suddenly burst. One of my ancestors, called ‘The Bone-Breaker’ from his great strength and courage, met the invaders with a mere handful of his followers and delayed their landing for hours until he and all his warriors were killed. By this time fresh bands were continually arriving, so that the warriors from Tonga must needs fight every inch of their way through the islands. And as they destroyed band after band their war-hunger became greater, their rage rose, and they determined to leave none of us living except such as they kept for sacrifice on their altars at home. Day after day the slaughter went on, ever more feeble grew the defence, until warriors who had never refused the battle hid themselves like the pêca in holes of the rocks. Behind us, about two miles inland, there is a high hill with a flat top and steep sides. To this as a shelter fled all the unmarried girls of our people, fearing to be carried away as slaves to Tonga, but never dreaming of being slain if their hiding-place was found. Here they remained unseen for seven days, until, ravenous with hunger, they were forced to leave their hiding-place and come down. But they hoped that, although no tidings had reached them from outside, their enemies had departed. Four hundred of them reached the plain over which we passed just now, weak with fasting, with no man to lead them, trembling at every rustling branch in the forest around. All appeared as it does to-day, the islands seemed slumbering in serene peace, although they knew that every spot where their people had lived was now defiled by the recent dead.

“While they paused, huddling together irresolutely, there suddenly burst upon their ears a tempest of exultant yells, and from both sides of the hill they had lately left the whole force of Tongans rushed after them. They fled as flies the booby before the frigate-bird, and with as little hope of escape. Before them spread this same bright sea smiling up at them as if in welcome. You know how our people love the sea, love to cradle ourselves on its caressing waves from the day when, newly born, our mothers lay us in its refreshing waters, until even its life-giving touch can no longer reanimate our withered bodies. So who can wonder that the maidens fled to it for refuge. Over this shining sand they rushed, plunging in ranks from yonder reef-edge into the quiet blue beyond. Hard behind them came the hunters, sure of their prey. They reached the reef and stared with utter dread and amazement upon the pretty play of a great school of porpoises that, in just such graceful evolutions as we have now seen, manifested their full enjoyment of life. Terror seized upon those blood-lusting Tongans, their muscles shrank and their weapons fell. Had there been one hundred Hapaian warriors left alive they might have destroyed the whole Tongan host, for it was become as a band of lost and terrified children dreading at every step to meet the vengeance of the gods. But there were none to hinder them, so they fled in safety to their own shores, never to invade Hapai again. And when, after many years, the few survivors of that week of death had repeopled Hapai, the story of the four hundred maidens befriended by the sea-gods in their time of need was the most frequently told among us. And to this day is the porpoise ‘taboo,’ although we know now that this legend, as well as all the others which have been so carefully preserved among us, is only the imagination of our forefathers’ hearts. Yet I often wish that we knew some of them were true.”

CATS ON BOARD SHIP