Swept Out to Sea Part 14

In handling a small whale, Tom told me, they would thus rip the blubber off in long strips, rolling the carca.s.s over and over in the bights of the holding chains. For this one whale Captain Rogers did not see fit to start the fire under the donkey-engine amid s.h.i.+ps, by which the blubber could have been raised inboard much easier.

The try-out caldrons were heated, however, and the blubber as it came inboard--like "sides" from a great hog--was hacked into pieces of two or three pounds each and thrown into the pots. Soon the deck of the bark, from bow to stern, was slippery with spilled oil, or bits of blubber. A thick, greasy smoke rolled away from the s.h.i.+p. It's flavor in the mouth was at first sickening. We got used to it.

"Hi, lad!" cried Tom Anderly, when I looked over the rail, "now you've got a taste of real whaler's souse--everything you put in your potato-trap for the rest of the v'y'ge will be flavored with whale-oil."

A whale will weigh about as many tons as it is feet long--in other words, this seventy-three foot whale weighed probably seventy ton and from the blubber we tried out thirty tons of oil--nearly half its weight in the tanks beside the baleen!

We had been sailing in the wake of the big school of whales we had spied when we killed the baleener. We came up with them again at mid-afternoon, and found that they were sperms. That was why the _Mysticete_ we had killed the day before did not start to drag the Scarboro toward the school. The baleeners and the _Denticete_ (toothed whales) do not mix in company, and are, indeed, seldom found in the same seas. The baleeners are usually found toward the Arctic or Antarctic regions, while the sperms and their ilk hold to the warm seas.

Captain Rogers might have run down to the school of cachelots and gunned for one of the beasts; but then the others would have been frightened away. The bark lay to upon a perfectly calm sea, and at a distance of about two miles from the school, and four boats were manned and shot away from the s.h.i.+p. The whales seemed to be asleep, or lying sunning themselves, upon the surface of the sea.

I was in Ben Gibson's boat, of which old Tom was steersman. He would handle the iron too, for as I have said, Ben was just as green in the actual practice of whalemans.h.i.+p as I was myself. We raced with the other boats for the nearest prize, which proved to be a husky bull, longer than the baleener we had killed.

I was bow oar, and I found that I could hold my own with the rest of the crew. Our stroke set a slapping pace and we bent to the work as though we were racing for the sport of it. Each crew desired to be first and have the credit of fles.h.i.+ng the iron in this monster. The water being so calm it proved to be a very pretty struggle. And all done so silently!

The whale is sharp-eared and on a mill-pond sea like this, sounds carry far. We came up from behind the mammoth, and we were ahead of the other boats.

The captain, in the nearest boat, signaled us with his hand to strike on, while his boat rushed past for another of the sleeping monsters. Old Tom and the young second mate changed places swiftly and the old harpooner stood up poising the heavy iron and looking to see that the coils of the rope were free. With a nod Mr. Gibson ordered the oars brought inboard and he pulled in the long steering oar himself. The whaleboat shot close up to the whale's side. The body loomed beside us like the rolling hull of an unballasted s.h.i.+p.

With my face over my shoulder I watched old Tom poise the iron. When he swung it back the muscles of his shoulder and upper arm flexed like a pugilist's! He was a fit subject for a statue at that instant. Then he flung body and weapon forward, the latter left his hand smoothly, and the sabre-sharp point sunk deep in the yielding blubber.

"Back all!" gasped Ben Gibson, scarcely above his breath, so excited was he.

But we had expected the order and were ready for it. The oars went in with unanimity and the boat shot back, for a whaleboat is as sharp at one end as it is at the other.

The whale made no flurry, however. It was as though he lay stunned for half a minute--perhaps longer. Then he made up his mind what to do, and he did it with a promptness and speed that was amazing.

Like a spurred horse the whale started ahead. I declare, it seemed as though half his length came out of the sea at the first jump. The line whizzed over the bow as though it were tackled to a fast express.

"Pull!" yelled Ben and we laid to the oars so that when the line ran out the shock would not be so great. When the first line was all out and Tom bent on another we were rus.h.i.+ng through the water like mad. We pa.s.sed the captain's boat just after he had struck on himself and his kill had sounded.

"Go it, young man!" yelled Captain Rogers, standing up and waving his hat to his nephew, "you're going out of town faster than you'll come back."

All we could do in that double-ended boat was to sit still and hold tight. I candidly believe that we traveled at a speed of a mile minute.

I had once been aboard of a turbine launch, and the black water was thrown up on either side of that whaleboat in a wave just as it had flowed away from the nose of the launch!

This wave seemed to be three feet higher than the gunwale of the boat and as black as ebony. Even Tom Anderly cast a glance at the boat-hatchet as though he contemplated cutting the taut line. Our eyes were blinded by the wind which seemed to be blowing a hurricane.

Actually there was scarcely a breath stirring over the surface of the placid ocean.

Our locomotive went directly through the school. Its mates rolled placidly and eyed us as we shot by with wicked glance. But none of them followed the boat which continued to tear through the water with undiminished speed.

But after a time we found that we had company, and mighty unpleasant company, too. In the boiling wake of the whaleboat I could see a dozen triangular fins--the fins of the real tiger shark of the tropics. Not a nice spectacle to men in such a situation as ours. Secretly I was frightened, and I reckon even the oldest in the boat's crew felt serious.

The mad whale was taking us farther and farther away from the bark and our friends. Indeed, the Scarboro was wiped out of sight, it seemed, within a very few minutes, and the other three boats were lost behind us, too.

The runaway, however, did not continue straight ahead. Its speed did not seem to slacken in the least; but soon it began to circle around, finding itself without its mates.

"If the old feller don't put on brakes pretty soon the harpoon'll git so hot it'll melt the blubber and pull out," chuckled the stroke-oar.

It was the first word spoken that showed relief. There was a perceptible slackening of our speed. And the whale was "going back to town," as the captain had intimated.

"Get hold of that line, Webb, and stand ready to haul," said Mr. Gibson to me, taking the heavy whalegun from its covered beckets, after changing places again with old Tom.

"Now for it!" muttered the boat-steerer, gripping the eighteen-foot oar and craning forward eagerly. He was just as excited as the rest of us. I hauled in on the line, standing firmly braced just behind the young second mate. The whale had actually come to a stop and did not sound. We drew closer and closer.

"Jest a leetle be-aft the for'ard fin, sir!" whispered old Tom, excitedly.

Gibson grunted some reply and raised the gun, taking careful aim at the mountain of flesh about which the water swirled. A second or two of breathless suspense followed as, oars in hand, we waited the report of the gun.

A sharp report made me jump. Then came the dull explosion of the bomb-lance somewhere in the vitals of the whale.

"Stern all! stern all!" shouted Mr. Gibson, this time finding his voice.

The wounded whale flung itself completely out of the water. For a moment we could see daylight underneath the huge bulk and as we backed water with all our strength it did seem as though that convulsed, eighty barrel sperm must fall upon the boat and overwhelm it!

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH THERE IS SOME INFORMATION AND MUCH EXCITEMENT

The young second officer's command needed no repet.i.tion. There was no temptation for us to linger under the monster. With a crash that seemed to make sea and air tremble, the great body struck the surface of the water.

The whaleboat dashed back just in time, and then rocked upon the waves as the dying whale rolled to and fro in his "flurry." Then, with a great puff, the creature rolled partially on his side, and the ocean thereabout became tinged with the blood thrown out of its blow-hole.

"Killed with one lance! killed with one lance!" yelled Second Mate Gibson.

But then he gripped his dignity again and sat down, giving commands in his ordinary tone. Old Tom stood up to glance about the sea-scape: "And now where's that thundering old hooker?" he demanded. "We'll have a fine time pulling this baby to her."

But that is what we had to do. We had had our "fun;" now we settled down to doggedly pulling the heavy oars, being divided into two watches, and saw the light of the Scarboro's trying-out works at midnight! The Captain and Mr. Rudd had both got small whales and one had been laid aboard each side of the bark. The crew were working like gnomes in a pantomime when we rowed sadly to the bark with our huge tow. How we worked! I never had been so tired in my life, and at the end of the second day when the oil from the three whales had been run into the tanks and the decks cleared up again, I could have fallen into my hammock and slept the clock around. But one never catches up one's sleep on a successful whaler, and the Scarboro certainly was proving good her name as a "lucky" craft.

Between Tom Anderly and Ben Gibson I learned a lot about whaling statistics--famous voyages, wonderful accidents to whaling crews "lucky strikes," and the like. And these facts, both curious and exciting, I stowed away in my mind for future reference. Despite the fact that steam vessels and the gun and explosive bullet have almost supplanted the old-fas.h.i.+oned manner of killing whales, the luck and pluck of half a century, or more, ago, counted for enough to offset these new methods.

The most extraordinary good-luck voyage ever made by an American whaler was that of the bark Envoy, belonging to the Brownells of New Bedford.

She was built in 1826 and in the year 1847 she returned to her then home port in such a condition that the underwriters refused to insure her for another voyage. But Captain William C. Brownell and Captain W. T. Walker agreed to take a chance in the old hulk and she put to sea from New Bedford under Captain Walker on July 12, 1848. As fitted for sea the Envoy, for repairs, supplies and all, stood the two owners in the sum of $8,000, whereas a vessel that could be insured might have cost from $40,000 to $60,000.

She got around the Horn without falling apart and took on a cargo of oil at Wytootackie which her captain had previously purchased from a wrecked whaler and stored there. This oil she hobbled into Manila with and s.h.i.+pped it to London at a profit of $9,000. From Manila the Envoy went cruising in the North Pacific and in fifty-five days she took 2,800 barrels of whale-oil and 40,000 pounds of baleen. With this she returned to Manila and s.h.i.+pped the bone and 1,800 barrels of oil to London, the s.h.i.+pment yielding $37,500 net.

Again she went cruising and secured 2,500 barrels of oil and 35,000 pounds of bone, bringing both into San Francisco in 1851, where she disposed of the oil for $73,450 and s.h.i.+pped the bone to her home port where it brought $12,500. To complete the record of her good luck, San Francisco merchants offered $6,000 for the condemned old bark that had, in two years, or thereabout, brought to her owners and venturesome crew the sum of $138,450.

With the captain's share as one-seventeenth of the "lay" the skipper of the Envoy must have made $8,000. "There were common sailors on that s.h.i.+p that turned up a thousand dollars in pocket when they were paid off,"

said Ben Gibson, when we were discussing it. "The second mate, with his one-forty-fifth, cleaned up three thousand. Hope I'll do half as well in the same length of time with the Scarboro."

I learned that the largest catch brought into port by an American whaler, as the result of a single cruise, included 5,300 barrels of oil and 200 barrels of sperm, with 50,000 pounds of bone. It was taken in a voyage lasting only 28 months by the South America, of Providence, Captain R. N. Sowle. It sold for $89,000 in 1849, and the cost of s.h.i.+p and outfit was $40,000.

The Pioneer, of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, holds the medal for the largest sum realized from a single voyage. She left her home port on June 4, 1864, for Davis Strait and returned a year and three months later with a cargo of 1,391 barrels of oil and 22,650 pounds of bone, which sold at war-time prices for $150,000. The outfitting of this craft cost $35,000.