Part 21

“That was thrice he had been seen; and the fourth time came swiftly.

“Eric was never a man to fear or avoid conflict, even with the forces of the universe itself; and after this third appearance of the scarred bull whale, he scarce slept at all, but held himself and his boat’s crew ready for battle the day long. He was aloft from dawn till dark, endlessly scouring the seas for a spout that would reveal the creature which personified to him the thing he was fighting. He became silent, thoughtful; and strength flowed into him and nerved him to a hard and efficient readiness. He was like an athlete in training for a contest, every nerve and muscle tuned.

“We sighted the scarred whale for the fourth time on a Sunday morning; a day when the sea was just rippled by the gentlest breezes, when the sun shone warmly and comfortingly upon the world, when the boats danced upon the waves with a soothing and caressing motion. The water was blue as turquoise, and the sky above it; and the two met at the horizon with the sea’s deeper blue below the sky’s, and the whitecaps gleaming like silver in the wind.

“It was not Eric who sighted the whale, but one of the men on the foret’gallant crosstrees; and his long ‘Blo-o-o-o-o-ow’ came droning down to us on the decks and snatched each one to his post like machinery. Cap’n Tobbey turned his glass on the distant spouts, and ordered the boats away; and Eric’s hard and seasoned men made his boat swing ahead of the others instantly, and steadily increase the lead.

“There was no way of knowing whether or no this was the old, scarred bull; but his spout told us it was a right whale, and not a sperm whale. Nevertheless, either Eric knew it was his enemy he went to meet, or else he was eager to discover whether it was or no, for he drove his men unsparingly, and was more than a quarter of a mile ahead of us when he reached the monster, and ran alongside.

“Over the water came to us the sound of his shouted command: ‘Let ‘im have it!’ And I saw the boatsteerer, standing in the bow with his knee in the clumsy-cleat, put all the strength of back and arms into the stroke, and snatch the second iron and send that home even as the whale leaped forward.

“While Eric and the boatsteerer were changing places, the great whale up-ended ponderously, his flukes lifting gently toward the sky full thirty feet clear of the water, and slid down out of sight. He had sounded; and I spurred my men to harder efforts so that we might be at hand to help if need arose.

“Ahead of us, the boat lay idle on the waves. I could see Eric in the bow, his hand on the line where it ran through the notch, bending to peer down into the depths; and I could see he was putting a strain upon the line, for the bow was down and almost dipping in the waves.

“Then suddenly the bow bobbed up, the strain relaxed; and Eric bent further over in an effort to pierce the depths below him. The whale was coming up; and if by chance he came up under the boat, the fight would be done, forthwith. Eric shouted a command; and the men began to haul in the line desperately, dropping it in a loose coil astern. The boatsteerer leaned upon his oar, alert, bending to hear the word from Eric, and himself looking overside for any sign of the monster who was rushing up from the depths toward them.

“Then a shout from Eric, the boat swung around as though on a pivot; and next instant the whale breached between his boat and mine.

“There is no more splendid sight in the world than this; to see the biggest creature that breathes flinging his four or five score tons clear out of the water to hang, a black bulk against the sky, for an instant before he falls resoundingly. Imagine a leaping trout, magnify the trout’s size a millionfold or more, and you have some faint notion of the monstrous majesty and grace of the breaching whale.

“I had seen whales breach before, sometimes with terror, sometimes with wonder at the beauty of the spectacle; but when this whale leaped clear into the sky and seemed to hang for an instant fair above us, a thrill of horror shot through me.

“For as he was in the air, fair to all to see, the scar upon his head was revealed; a scar like a sunken cross, mark of some ancient wound. It was the scarred bull to which Eric’s boat was fast.

“I looked toward him, and saw that Eric had seen the scar; but Eric loved battle. He shouted to his men, and even as the great whale fell into the water again, Eric’s men hauled in till they were alongside the monster, and Eric drove home his lance.

“The whale, at the prick of steel, redoubled the furious struggle of the breach; and he rolled away and away from the boat, upon the surface, in a smother of foam and spray. The men were forced to loose the line again to avoid capsizing; but Eric himself set his hand to it, and by his own strength held the nose of the boat so near the rolling whale that when the enormous creature straightened out at last to run, half a dozen pulls brought them again alongside.

“They were in some fashion safer there than elsewhere. The harpoons had struck well behind the fin, and the whale’s rolling had wrapped the line about him in such fashion that when the boat pulled alongside it lay safely behind the fin, and yet safely forward of the flukes. If the whale rolled toward them, they would be crushed beneath his bulk; but short of such a move, the monster could not shake them off.

“And Eric was working his lance like mad. I had never seen such frantic energy. He sent the six-foot steel into the soft body again and again, not with a long shove, but with a single stabbing thrust to each attack. His target was the whale’s greatest girth, and the lower part of the body; and although the battle seemed an endless flurry and strife of bloody foam, it was only a matter of seconds before the whale’s labored spouting crimsoned--sure sign he had received a mortal wound.

“I caught the sound of an exultant shout from Eric, and his boat sheered away. The monster had suddenly halted in its flight; it lay momentarily motionless, as though testing its own strength against this attack which had pierced its vitals. Then in a desperate and panic-stricken flurry it leaped forward and away, the boat, with line running free, trailing safely behind.

“They drove past where my boat lay; and Eric turned to look toward me. He was a heroic figure in the bow of the little craft, erect and tall, his bright hair and his naked torso crimson with the flood from the whale’s bloody spout. He was gleaming wet with spray and red foam; and he waved his long lance as he passed and shouted:

“‘The scarred whale, Mark! I’ve killed him!’

“Before I could reply, he was beyond the sound of my voice; and then the great beast whirled and came back toward us. He must have seen my boat and supposed it that of his tormentor; for he charged at us, and only the swiftest swerve took us out of his path in time. Beyond me, I saw him wallow over the third mate’s boat and on; and I hurried to pick up the men in the water.

“Save for their bruises and their drenching, they were uninjured. We dragged them aboard, set a waif in the boat, tied its oars to keep it afloat, and set out after Eric and the whale. The great creature was circling in its last flurry; and as we drew near, with a tremendous spasm it threw its mighty bulk in a swift, short circle and was still.

“We drove ahead, toward Eric’s boat; and Eric’s countenance was burning with a splendid triumph. This last moment of victorious pride Fate allowed him.

“He was ahead; his boat ran alongside the huge carcass, and Eric bent over the bow with the short boat spade to cut a hole in the whale’s tail for towing it to the ship.

“The boat spade is a steel blade, razor sharp, spade-shaped, attached to a stout wooden handle. Eric leaned far out and drove it into the tough fiber of the tail.

“And then the right whale’s flukes whirled in a last, spasmodic struggle; up they whirled, and over, and down. They missed the boat by inches; but from Eric’s strong hands the boat spade was torn. It twisted in the air, its steel blade flashing crimson. Under the blow of the flukes it twisted and sang, and then chocked home. The steel struck Eric squarely in the face; and it split his skull as you split a walnut.”

IV

The old captain leaned forward to knock the dottel from his pipe upon the andirons, and settled in his chair again. For a little time we sat without speaking; but I asked at last:

“Joan--did she forgive him in the end?”

Cap’n Brackett’s grim old countenance softened. “Oh, aye,” he said. “She’d forgiven him before. She warned me when we started on the cruise to watch over him.” He filled and lighted his ancient pipe again, then softly finished: “She’s gone, long since. But our daughter looks very like her now.”

NOTE

It was, if memory may be relied upon, Aristotle who initiated the Greeks into the delights of classification, analysis and definition. Since then, the love of pasting names on things has become so universal that it may almost be classed as an instinct. The ordinary man, in the presence of a new mountain, river, brook, hill, tree, flower, house, automobile, puppy or kitten infallibly asks himself: “What shall I call it?” And having labelled and catalogued his new discovery or acquisition, he is content.

There would appear to be some need of more accurate classification and definition in the field of prose fiction. The word “novel” has come to be as capacious as an omnibus. A story of twenty thousand words is labelled “novelette” in a magazine; then makes its bow between boards as a full-fledged novel. This same confusion extends in the other direction; and it is not infrequent to see stories of twenty thousand words and upward called “short stories.” A manuscript which is a short story in one magazine is a novelette in another, and a novel later on. This confusion has no doubt arisen from the custom, fairly general among the book-buying public, of preferring a “thick” book. Print a short story in large type, with wide margins, and call it a novel; thus is the demand for bulk most easily satisfied.