Chapter 18

IN WHICH I COME VERY NEAR GOING OUT OF THE STORY

Our boat escaped the collision with the mad whale on her first attack. She rushed by us like a steamer, throwing up a wave from her jaws and just "humping herself." Old Tom swerved us about swiftly in her wake and we came right upon the calf.

"By jinks! I'll soak you one for luck, anyway!" ejaculated the angry second mate, and he up with his lance-gun and put a shot into the little fellow.

"Now, sir, we'll have trouble with her," grunted Tom, grimly.

"She's coming back!" stroke oar shouted.

It seemed as though the whale knew her young had been killed. She whirled in the sea and rushed down upon the drifting calf, the blood from which tinged the sea for yards around its carcass. It was really pitiful to see her stop at it, and seemingly caress it, drawing it toward her with her huge fin that it might suckle. But we were alive to the chance of getting near enough to lance her, and under whispered instructions rowed in.

Mr. Gibson had risen and aimed the gun and was about to fire when the cow-whale seemed to suddenly understand her loss and her own danger. With a mighty flirt of her tail (which same came near to swamping our boat) she "sounded," as it is called.

Her head went down and her great tail flirted in the air. Mr. Gibson went over backward, exploding the gun and sending the bomb-lance into the air. The whale was out of sight in a flash and the line began to run over the bow with a speed that made the woodwork smoke.

I bent on another line and then dipped up some water in the bailer to throw upon the smoking gunwale. It was at this moment that I came as close to death as ever whaleman experienced. A lurch of the boat canted me and I threw out my left hand to prevent myself from diving overboard.

It was a most unfortunate gesture. In some way that uncoiling line, which moved so fast one could scarcely follow it with the eye, wrapped about my arm below the elbow and--like a flash--I was jerked out of the boat and shot beneath the surface of the sea!

I would like to tell of this terrible incident as it seemed to my mates in the whaleboat; I presume they were aghast at my flight over the bow and disappearance. For a man to be carried overboard by the harpoon line, and entangled in that line, is not an unknown incident in the annals of whale-fishing. But only one person ever went through the experience and lived to tell of it before my time--or so I am informed. This was Captain Parker of the American whaler West Wind.

I don't know how the matter seemed to Captain Parker; I can only relate my own sensations. And, believe me, they were queer enough. I shot down after the sounding whale with a rapidity that seemed to deprive me of the ordinary powers of thought or imagination. My only conscious idea was that I was a dead boy if I could not cut that line!

I was rushing down into the depths head-foremost--and with the swiftness, it seemed, of a reversed skyrocket! I thought my arm would be torn from its socket, so great was the resistance of the water. Fortunately I had been clothed in a thick jacket, and that jacket-sleeve saved my arm from being mutilated.

I was traveling so fast behind the sounding whale that I could not move my right arm from my side. It seemed glued there, so closely was it pressed to my body by the force of the water. The pressure on my brain became frightful, too, and thunder roared in my ears--or, so it seemed.

For an instant I opened my eyes. It appeared that a stream of blasting flame passed before them. I was blinded.

But, providentially, I was composed. I knew what I was about--rather, what was happening to me--each moment. I struggled to reach the knife I wore at my belt; but every second I grew weaker. The compression around my chest was like that of a tightening band of iron.

Of course, only seconds elapsed; but it seemed a very, very long time. Would the whale ever reach the bottom? Would the line ever sag? Far gone as I was, my brain remained perfectly clear and I was ready to make use of the least fortunate incident in my favor.

Then it came--the slackening of the line. I drove forward with a mighty kick of my feet--a last gasp of strength. My fingers closed on the handle of the gully, I ripped it out of its sheath, and slashed the keen blade across the line.

I cut my wrist a bit in so doing. Luckily, I cut ahead of the arm entangled in the line; it was more by good luck than good management.

My remembrances after that are confused. I know I shot upward from the dreadful depths, the human body being so much more buoyant than the salt sea. I lost consciousness slowly. All I finally remember was an enlarging spot of light toward which I mounted but which seemed to be miles and miles away!

I was suffocating. A gurgling spasm seized upon me. Light, and sense, and all were quenched suddenly. Life was slipping from my grasp.