Chapter 15

IN WHICH I HEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME THE WHALER'S BATTLE-CRY

So impressed was I by the imaginings suggested by Tom Anderly's story, that I opened my letter to old Ham Mayberry and asked him if he had ever heard of a man named Carver who had gone through the experiences Tom had related of the man who had swum to the Sally Smith from the direction of Bolderhead Neck?

It was the very next day, and a fortnight after I had boarded the whaling bark, that I got a chance to send off the letters. The wind lulled and we crossed the course of a steamship hailing from Baltimore and touching on the West Coast of Africa; Captain Rogers sent the letters aboard the steamship. There was no use in my trying to get passage on her, however; I would have gained nothing by such a move.

"Now your letters will be picked up by a London, or Lisbon-bound steamer and it won't be two months before your folks will know all about you," Ben Gibson said. "If you'd had to depend upon the post-box in the Straits of Magellan, for instance, it might be six months before Bolderhead folk would ever know what had become of you."

I must confess that every day I was becoming more and more enamored of this life at sea. We had had little fair weather and were kept busy making sail and then reefing again, or repairing the small damages made by the gale. Captain Rogers was not the man to lay hove to in any fair breeze. We outran the bad weather before we crossed the line and then the lookout went to the masthead and from that time on, as long as I was with the Scarboro, the crowsnest was never empty by day.

For we had come into those regions of the South Atlantic where schools of the big mammals for which we hunted might be at any time come upon, especially at this season of the year. The gale having left us, the weather was charming. While winter was threatening New England we were in the latitude of perpetual summer, and as long as the trade wind blew we did not suffer from the heat.

The Scarboro carried crew enough to put out six boats at a time and still leave a boatkeeper and cook aboard. As a usual thing, however, only four boats were expected to be out at once--the captain's, Ben Gibson's (with whom Tom Anderly went as boat-steerer and would really be in charge until Ben learned the ropes) the mate's boat, and Bill Rudd, the carpenter's, boat. The gun forward in the Scarboro's bows, however, was there for a purpose, too, as I found out on the first day we sighted a whale.

The man in the crowsnest suddenly hailed the deck, when Mr. Gibson was in charge:

"On deck, sir!" he sang out, with such eagerness that the watch came instantly to attention.

"Well, sir?" cried Ben.

"Ah-h blows! Again, sir!"

"Pass the word for Cap'n Rogers, Webb," the second mate said to me, and grabbing his glasses he started up the backstays to see the sight. Some of the hands sprang into the rigging, too, and soon the whaler's battle-cry rang through the ship:

"Ah-h blows! And spouts!"

Captain Rogers was on deck in a moment. He ran up after Ben Gibson and took an earnest peek through the glasses himself. Then he dropped down to the quarter and said, but with satisfaction:

"Only one fish in sight. May be more ahead. Perhaps it's a she with a calf and has got behind the school. We'll see. Now, boys! tumble up and let's get the rags on her."

We went at the sails with a will and for the first time I saw every yard of canvas the Scarboro could set flung to the breeze. The old bark began to hustle. She was heavy and she could do no fancy sailing; but having the wind with her she rushed down upon the lone whale like a steamship. Soon we could see the undulating black hump of the whale from the deck.

We saw an occasional spurt of water, or mist, from its blow-holes. By and by it breached and was out of sight for a short time. When it came up again it was still tail-end to the Scarboro and not half a mile away. There was no other whale in sight; but this was a big fellow--a right whale, or baleener. After coming up it lay quietly on the water, or moving ahead very slowly.

The men were eager to get after it in the boats; but Captain Rogers knew a better way than that to attack a lone whale. We reefed down again and left little canvas exposed while the Scarboro kept on her tack under the momentum she had already gathered. The captain went forward where the gun had been made ready. He swung it about on its pivot and got the range of the whale.

At this small distance the huge mammal looked like a cigar-shaped piece of smooth, shiny slate-colored India-rubber--no longer black. Four or five feet of its diameter and forty feet or more of its length showed like a mound in the smooth water, and the body alternately rose and dipped as the whale swam slowly along. It was doubtless feeding on the tiny marine creatures which are the sole food of the right whale. It took great "gulps" of sea water into its cavernous mouth, water which it strained out through its curtain of baleen, swallowing only the tiny fish down a gullet so small that it would not admit a man's fist.

The Scarboro was approaching it from behind and at an angle, so that its course and ours made the sides of a V. Captain Rogers followed the course of the whale alertly, swinging the muzzle of the cannon with skill. Most of the crew were grouped behind him in anxious expectancy.

Suddenly I felt a touch upon my arm. It was Tom Anderly. He was pointing silently over the port bow. There, a couple of miles away, I judged, several columns of mist were spouting into the air. _There was the school!_

But I turned to view the nearby mammoth again just as the gun spoke. I saw a hideous, crimson zigzag gash on the broad side of the whale, I heard the rumbling roar of the time-bomb at the point of the harpoon exploding in the whale's vitals.

Instantly the whole crew were in a pandemonium of excitement; but the captain's shrill orders were obeyed like clockwork. I felt the blow of the great bark give a convulsive jerk. The whale had gone straight downward and the cable attached to the harpoon shot over the bow so fast that the eye could not follow its course. Where the hemp touched the rail a column of smoke arose. Two men sprang with buckets to dip up the sea-water and pour it upon the shrieking line. The windlass spun around like a boy's top.

Coil after coil of the rope leaped into nothingness. Had there been a big express locomotive hitched to that line, and going at full speed, I do not think the line would have paid out any faster!

At last the windlass ceased to spin. The whale had either touched bottom, or had descended as far as it could. We had already laid our mainsail aback and as the line lay slack upon the water, Captain Rogers motioned to the men at the windlass to wind in. It was like playing a fish at the end of a line and reel.

Those next few moments were breathless ones for all hands. Suddenly the sea parted right off the port bow, and not half a cable's length ahead. Up, and up the gigantic creature rose--up, up, up till it towered fifteen feet above the Scarboro's rail!

Then it turned a somersault, beating the sea to waves like the boiling of a cauldron. It rose again, churning the sea with its tail, and then raising the caudal fin for twenty feet, or more, and slapping it down upon the water with a shock like the report of a big gun--aye, like a thunder-clap!

Then the great beast whirled round and round--it seemed seeking for the thing that had so hurt it. We watched the struggle of the leviathan with pop-eyed expectation--especially the young second mate and myself, for we were the only real greenhorns aboard the Scarboro. The whale wrapped several lengths of the line about its body and then shot away into the southwest, away from the distant school. It swam so fast that it actually seemed to skip from wave to wave like a swallow.

When it reached the end of the slack there was a jerk that shook the bark from stem to stern. Then came the tug of war. There was no small whaleboat behind it, but a great, 195 ton bark, and this massive bulk the creature actually towed like a steam-tug towing a steamship.

The captain let more line out. Far out at the end of two miles of line the whale lashed about, and churned the sea, and blew blasts of vapor into the air. Then old Tom Anderly cried that it was spouting blood and we knew the end was near.

But the captain gave the whale half an hour in which to die before ordering the line wound inboard. The rest of the school had gone on steadily into the south and was still several miles away. We could not launch our boats for them, but gave our complete attention to the first kill.

As the whale felt the pull of the line it gave a single convulsive jump. But after waiting a moment or two, Captain Rogers commanded the windlass to be manned again. Slowly the line came in and, after a time, the huge, inert, flabby body floated, belly up, just off our bows.

The mate's boat was lowered and a chain was passed around the whale's body just forward of the tail. With this it was grappled to the Scarboro's side. I could see a dozen quarreling porpoises eating the tongue of the monster that had been, two hours before, alive and, to these scavengers, invincible.

There was a broad smile on every man's face, from Captain Rogers down the line. The first kill had been successful. Oil was in sight. But--as I soon found out--the real work of the voyage had begun as well.