CHAPTER XIX

"O whiskey is the life of man."

And the sailors as they heaved would chorus:

"O whiskey, O Johnny.O whiskey is the life of man,Whiskey for the Johnnies."

Then Gabriel would sing:

"Whiskey killed my poor old dad,Whiskey drove my mother mad,Whiskey caused me much abuse,Whiskey put me in the calaboose,Whiskey fills a man with care,Whiskey makes a man a bear."

And the men would come through with the refrain:

"Whiskey, Johnny.I drink whiskey when I can.O whiskey for the Johnnies."

At the end of our song which ran through verses enough to bring a blanket piece of blubber swinging inboard, we would look wistfully toward the quarter-deck and wonder if the "old man" would take our musical hint.

Or Gabriel would start up "Rolling Rio":

"I'll sing you a song of the fish of the sea."

The men would thunder:

"Rolling Rio."

Gabriel would continue:

"As I was going down Broadway StreetA pretty young girl I chanced to meet."

And the sailors would sing:

"To my rolling Rio Grande.Hurrah, you Rio, rolling Rio.So fare you well, my pretty young girl,I'm bound for the Rio Grande."

"Blow, Boys, Blow" was another with which we made the Arctic ring. The other ships could not have failed to hear its swinging rhythm as it burst from our lusty lungs in this fashion:

Gabriel:

"A Yankee ship came down the river."

The sailors:

"Blow, boys, blow."

Gabriel:

"And who do you think was skipper of her?Dandy Jim of old Carolina."

Sailors:

"Blow, my bully boys, blow."

Gabriel:

"And who do you think was second greaser?Why, Pompey Squash, that big buck nigger."

Sailors:

"Blow, boys, blow."

Gabriel:

"And what do you think they had for dinner?Monkey lights and donkey's liver."

The Lip of a Bowhead Whale

Sailors:

"Blow, my bully boys, blow."

Gabriel:

"And what do you think they had for supper?Old hard tack and Yankee leather.Then blow, my boys, for better weather.Blow, my boys, I love to hear you."

Sailors:

"Blow, my bully boys, blow."

So with a heave and a song we soon had our whale stowed, bone and blubber, below hatches. TheReindeerand theHelen Marrhad drifted far away from us by the time our work was finished, but they were still in sight and their try-works smoking. Our whale yielded 1,800 pounds of bone.

A NARROW PINCH

The whaling fleet divided soon after entering the Arctic Ocean. Some of the ships went straight on north to the whaling grounds about Point Barrow and Herschel Island. The others bore to the westward for the whaling along the ice north of eastern Siberia. We stood to the westward. In a few days we had raised the white coasts of a continent of ice that shut in all the north as far as the eye could see and extended to the Pole and far beyond. With the winds in the autumn always blowing from the northwest, the sea was perfectly calm in the lee of this indestructible polar cap. I have been out in the whale boats when they were heeled over on their beam-ends under double-reefed sails before a gale of wind upon a sea as smooth as the waters of a duck pond.

It was now no longer bright twilight at midnight. The sun already well on its journey to the equator, sank earlier and deeper below the horizon. Several hours of darkness began to intervene between its setting and its rising. By September we had a regular succession of days and nights.

With the return of night we saw for the first time that electric phenomenon of the Far North, the aurora borealis. Every night during our stay in the Arctic the skies were made brilliant with these shooting lights. I had expected to see waving curtains of rainbow colors, but I saw no colors at any time. The auroras of those skies were of pure white light. A great arch would suddenly shoot across the zenith from horizon to horizon. It was nebulously bright, like a shining milky way or a path of snow upon which moonlight sparkles. You could hear it rustle and crackle distinctly, with a sound like that of heavy silk violently shaken. It shed a cold white radiance over the sea like the light of arc lamps, much brighter than the strongest moonlight.

It was not quite bright enough to read by—but almost—and it threw sharp, black shadows on the deck. Gradually the arch would fade, to be succeeded by others that spanned the heavens from other angles. Often several arches and segments were in the sky at the same time. Sometimes, though rarely, the aurora assumed the form of a curtain hanging vertically along the horizon and shimmered as though agitated by a strong wind.

I was pleasantly surprised by the temperatures encountered in the Arctic. We were in the polar ocean until early in October, but the lowest temperature recorded by the brig's thermometer was 10 degrees below zero. Such a temperature seems colder on sea than on land. Greater dampness has something to do with it, but imagination probably plays its part. There is something in the very look of a winter sea, yeasty under the north wind and filled with snowy floes and icebergs, that seems to congeal the marrow in one's bones. In the cold snaps, when a big wave curled over the bows, I have seen it break and strike upon the deck in theform of hundreds of ice pellets. Almost every day when it was rough, the old Arctic played marbles with us.

What with the mists, the cold rains, the sleets and snows and flying spray, the brig was soon a mass of ice. The sides became encased in a white armor of ice which at the bows was several feet thick. We frequently had to knock it off. The decks were sheeted with ice, the masts and spars were glazed with it, the shrouds, stays, and every rope were coated with ice, and the yard-arms and foot-ropes were hung with ice stalactites. One of the most beautiful sights I ever saw was the whaling fleet when we fell in with it one cold, gray morning. The frost had laid its white witchery upon the other ships as it had upon the brig, and they glided through the black seas, pallid, shimmering, and phantom-like in their ice armor—an armada of ghostlyFlying Dutchmen.

The brig was constantly wearing and tacking on the whaling grounds and there was considerable work to be done aloft. By the captain's orders, we did such work with our mittens off.Hauling bare-handed on ropes of solid ice was painful labor, and "Belay all!" often came like a benediction to souls in torment. Then we had much ado whipping our hands against our sides to restore the circulation. After Big Foot Louis had frozen a finger, the captain permitted us to keep our mittens on.

Work aloft under such conditions was dangerous. Our walrus-hide boots were heelless and extremely slippery and our footing on the foot-ropes was precarious. We had to depend as much upon our hands as upon our feet to keep from falling when strung out for reefing along the topsail yard. Many were the slips and hair-breadth escapes. It seems now, on looking back on it, almost miraculous that some of us green hands did not tumble to our death.

We saw whales frequently. Sometimes the boats were lowered half a dozen times a day. Often we spent whole days in the boats, and even in our skin clothes it was freezing business sitting still on the gunwale of a beam-ended boat driving along at thrilling speed in the teeth of an Arctic gale. Our skipper was a good gambler,and he lowered whenever there was an off chance to bag a leviathan.

As we worked to the westward, twin peaks rose out of the sea ahead of us. Covered with snow and ice, they stood out against the sky as white as marble. It was our first glimpse of Herald Island, in latitude 71 degrees north. We sailed north of the island and close to it. It looked forbiddingly desolate. Along the shores there was a rampart of black rock. Nowhere else was a glimpse of earth or herbage of any sort. The island was a gleaming white mass of snow and ice from the dark sea to the tips of the twin mountains. It was discovered in 1849 by Captain Kellett of the English shipHeraldand named after his vessel. Captain De Long, leader of the ill-fatedJeanetteexpedition, was frozen in close to the island in the winter of 1880. He found polar bear plentiful and trapped and shot a number.

Here at Herald Island we fell in with eighteen ships of the whaling fleet—all that had cruised to the westward—and it was only by good luck that some of them did not leave theirhulks on those desolate shores. The polar pack rested solidly against the island's western end and curved in a great half-moon to the north and east. The pocket thus formed between the island and the ice looked good for whales and the ships hunted it out carefully.

Far to the eastward, a long arm of ice reached out from the pack and grasped the island's eastern end. This arm was perhaps a mile wide. It barred our passage back to the open sea. The ships had been caught in a trap. They were bottled up in a hole of water perhaps a hundred square miles in extent. Busy on the lookout for whales, the captains of the fleet did not realize the situation for several hours. When they discovered their predicament, they hurried to the crow's-nests with glasses to try to spy out an avenue of escape. Sail was cracked on. The ships began to fly about like panic-stricken living creatures.

The great polar pack was pressing rapidly toward the island. Unless the ships escaped, it seemed likely they would be securely hemmed in before night. In this event, if they escaped wreck by ice pressure they faced the prospect of lying still in an ice bed until the pack broke up in the spring.

A Close Call Off Herald Island

All day long the frightened ships scurried up and down the ice barrier without finding an opening. They ran to the westward. There was no escape there. They flew back to the east. An ice wall confronted them. The case seemed hopeless. The panic of the captains became more and more evident. If a ship hurried off in any direction, the other ships flocked after her like so many scared sheep. Morning and afternoon passed in this wild search for an outlet. Night was coming on.

A bark squared her yards and shot away to the southeast. It was theSea Breeze. When the others expected her to tack, she did no such thing, but kept going straight ahead. On she went alone, far from the fleet. It was exciting to watch that single ship flying eastward. What could it mean? Had she found an opening? The other ships turned their prows after her, one by one. A long line of vessels soon was careering in the wake of theSea Breeze. Shehad dwindled to a little ship in the far distance when at last we saw her break out the American colors at her mizzen peak. Every man aboard the brig gave a cheer. Cheers from the other ships came across the water. It meant that theSea Breezewas clear.

She had found a lead that suddenly had opened through the eastern ice strip, as leads will open in drifting floes. The lead was not entirely clear. A narrow strip of ice lay across it. TheSea Breezebutted through this strip and sailed on to freedom. The other vessels followed. Our brig was the tenth ship to pass through. As we negotiated the narrow passage, the ice was so close on both sides we could have leaped upon it from the bulwarks. It was with a joyous sense of escape that we cleared the pack and swung once more on the open sea. Soon after the last ship of the fleet had bumped her way to safety the ice closed solidly behind.

A RACE AND A RACE HORSE

Early one morning the old familiar cry rang from the crow's-nest—"Blo-o-o-w."

A lone whale, in plain view from the deck, was sporting lazily on the surface about a mile and a half off our starboard bow. The three boats were hurriedly lowered and the crews scrambled in. We took to the oars, for not a breath of air was stirring and the sea was as smooth as polished silver. Away went the boats together, as if from a starting line at the crack of a pistol, with the whale as the goal and prize of the race.

Mr. Winchester had often boasted of the superiority of his crew. Mr. Landers had not seemed interested in the question, but Gabriel resented the assumption. "Just wait," he used to say to us confidentially. "We'll show him which is de bes' crew. Our time'll come." Themen of the mate's boat had shared their officer's vainglorious opinion. They had long swaggered among us with a self-complacent assurance that made us smart. Our chance had at last come to prove their pride a mockery under the skipper's eyes. If ever men wanted, from the bottom of their hearts, to win, we did. We not only had our name as skillful oarsmen to vindicate, but a grudge to wipe out.

So evenly matched were the crews that the boats rushed along side by side for at least half a mile, Mr. Winchester insouciant and superciliously smiling, Mr. Landers indifferent, Gabriel all eagerness and excitement. Perhaps Mr. Landers knew his crew was outclassed. If he did not, he was not long in finding it out, for his boat began to drop steadily behind and was soon hopelessly out of the contest. But the other two crews, stroke for stroke, were proving foemen worthy of each other's prowess.

"Oho, Gabriel," Mr. Winchester laughed contemptuously, "you think your boat can out-pull us, eh? Bet you ten pounds of tobacco we beat you to the whale."

"I take you," cried Gabriel excitedly. "Dat's a bet."

If Gabriel accepted the challenge, so did we, and right heartily at that. We threw ourselves, heart and soul, into the struggle. The men in the mate's boat, holding us cheaply, believed they could draw away whenever they chose and go on to win, hands down. The mate kept looking over at us, a supercilious smile still curling the corners of his mouth.

"Come on now, my boys," he cried. "All together. Shake her up a bit. Give those fellows a taste of your mettle."

We heard his words as distinctly as his own crew heard them—he was only a few boat lengths away. They inspired us to greater exertion than they inspired his own men. They spurted. So did we. Still the two boats raced neck and neck. We were not to be shaken off. The mate looked disconcerted. His men had done their level best to take the lead and they had failed. That spurt marked the crisis of the race.

The mate's smile faded out. His face grewanxious. Then it hardened into an expression of grim determination. He had sat motionless at the beginning. Now when he saw his vaunted superiority slipping through his fingers he began to "jockey"—throwing his body forward in violent lunges at every stroke of the sweeps, pushing with all his might on the stroke oar, and booming out, "Pull, my boys; pull away, my boys."

But old Gabriel was "jockeying," too, and encouraging us in the same fashion.

"We show dat mate," he kept repeating. "We show him. Steady together, my lads. Pull away!"

And we pulled as if our lives depended on it, bending to the oars with every ounce of our strength, making the long sweeps bend in the water. We began to forge ahead, very slowly, inch by inch. We saw it—it cheered us to stronger effort. Our rivals saw it—it discouraged them. Under the heart-breaking strain they began to tire. They slipped back little by little. They spurted again. It was no use. We increased our advantage. Open daylight beganto broaden between the stern of our boat and the bow of theirs. They were beaten in a fair trial of strength, oarsmanship, and endurance.

"Ha, my boys," chuckled Gabriel. "We win. Good-by to dat mate. Now we catch dat whale."

We shot along at undiminished speed, pulling exultantly. What the whale was doing or how close we were to it, we at the oars could not see.

"Stand by, Louis," said Gabriel presently.

"Aye, aye, sir," responded Louis.

A few more strokes and a great black bulk loomed close alongside.

"Give it to him, Louis," cried Gabriel.

And as the boat glanced against that island of living ebony, Louis's harpoon sank deep into the soft, buttery mass. We heard the tiny concussion of the cap of the tonite gun, and a fraction of a second later the bomb exploded with a muffled roar in the whale's vitals.

"Stern, stern!" shouted Gabriel. "Stern for your lives!"

We backed water as hard as we could. The great back went flashing down, the mighty tailrose up directly over us, shutting out the sky. It curled over away from us and smote the sea with deafening thunder. As quick as lightning it rose into the air again, curled high above us with tragic menace, and came crashing down, this time toward us. But we had backed just out of harm's way. Death and that terrible tail missed us by about three feet.

The mate's boat came rushing up. It was too late. The whale—our whale—had sounded.

"Your boat can beat us, eh?" Gabriel called tauntingly to Mr. Winchester. "Not much. I know we break blackskin first. I know we win dat race."

Our line began to dance and sing, leaping up from its neatly laid coils in the tub in dizzy spirals and humming out over the bow.

"Ha, boys," sang out Kaiuli, our Kanaka bow oarsman. "Now for fine ride behind Arctic race horse—eh?"

With a whale harnessed to our boat and a sea as smooth as any turnpike for our highway, we settled ourselves for the ride. The friction of the line set the boat going. It gathered momentum.In a little while we were tearing along through that sea of oil, our bow deep in the smother as the whale pulled down upon it, and flashing walls of white spray flaring out on either side.

The other boats pulled for the point at which it seemed most probable the whale would come up. When it rose to the surface, the mate's boat was nearest.

"Lay me on four seas off and I'll get him," we heard Long John shout to Mr. Winchester. The mate did just that. The whale was up but a moment and Long John tried for it, but it was too long a dart, and his harpoon fell into the sea. Before he had recovered his iron we had shot past. When the whale rose again, we bumped out of water on its body. A second harpoon drove home in its back, a second bomb exploded in its insides. A great shudder seized the monster. The water foamed white with its throes. Then everything grew still. Slowly the great body rolled over, belly up.

Big Foot Louis danced up and down in the bow, raising his knees high in a sort of joyfulcake-walk. Gabriel, equally excited, waved his hat.

"By golly," he shouted, "dat mate don't strike him. Dat feesh is all ours. It takes old Gabriel fer kill de whale, by golly."

When we got back to the brig we looked like snow-powdered Santa Clauses. The spray kicked up in our wild ride behind the Arctic Ocean race horse had wet us from head to foot and, freezing on our fur clothes, had frosted us all over with fine white ice. Mr. Winchester was a good sportsman and paid his bet promptly. Out of his winnings Gabriel gave each man of his boat's crew a plug of tobacco.

After the whale had been brought alongside the ship and the blubber had been peeled off its body, it fell to the lot of Big Foot Louis to cut in the "old head." It was his first opportunity to show his experience in such work and he was as elated as a boy. He threw off his coat with a theatrical flourish, hitched up his trousers, seized an axe, and with an air of bravado climbed down on the stripped carcass. A little sea had begun to run and the whale was bending sinuouslythroughout its length and rolling slightly from side to side.

Louis chopped two little ledges in the whale's flesh with the deftness of an old hand, and planting his feet in these, began raining blows with his axe on the neck. He was getting on famously, and the crew, hanging over the bulwarks, was watching with admiring eyes. Suddenly the whale gave an unexpectedly violent roll—our Arctic Ocean race horse was proving a bronco even in death—and Louis's big foot slipped off into the water. He lost his balance, pitched forward, and sprawled face downward on the whale, his axe sailing away and plunking into the sea. He clutched frantically at the whale, but every grip slipped loose and, inch by inch, with eyeballs popping out of his head, he slid off into the sea and with a yell went under.

Everybody laughed. The captain held his sides and the officers on the cutting stage almost fell off in the violence of their mirth. Louis came up spluttering and splashing. He was an expert swimmer, as expert as the Kanakas among whom he had lived for years, and heneeded all his skill to keep afloat in his heavy boots and skin clothes. As soon as the mate could control his merriment, he stuck the long handle of his spade down and Louis grasped it and was pulled back on the whale's body. He sat there, dripping and shivering and with chattering teeth, rolling his white eyes up at the laughing crew along the rail with a tragic "Et tu, Brute" expression. He couldn't see the joke.

"Lemme aboard," he whimpered.

"Stay where you are," roared the captain, "and cut in that head."

Louis lived in mortal fear of the skipper, and the way he straightened up in his slippery seat and said "Aye, aye, sir!" made the crew burst out laughing again. Another axe was passed down to him. He floundered to his feet, and though he found it harder than ever in his wet boots to keep his footing, and slipped more than once and almost fell off again, he finally succeeded in cutting off the head. He had regained his air of bravado by the time he had scrambled back on deck.

"Pretty close shave, Louis," ventured a sailor.

"Humph," returned Louis, "dat's nothin'—nothin' at all." And with quite lordly dignity, despite the dripping brine, he stalked off to the cabin to change his clothes.

BEARS FOR A CHANGE

Soon after taking our third whale, we saw our first polar bears—two of them on a narrow floe of ice. When the brig was within fifty yards of them the mate got out his rifle and began blazing away. His first shot struck one of the bears in the hind leg. The animal wheeled and snapped at the wound. The second shot stretched it out dead. The second bear was hit somewhere in the body and, plunging into the sea, it struck out on a three-mile swim for the main ice pack. It swam with head and shoulders out, cleaving the water like a high-power launch and leaving a creaming wake behind. Moving so swiftly across the brig's course, it made a difficult target.

"I'm going down after that fellow," said Mr. Winchester.

He called a boat's crew and lowered, taking his place in the bow with his rifle, while Long John sat at the tiller. He had got only a short distance from the ship when Captain Shorey ordered Gabriel after him.

"Killing that bear may be a bigger job than he thinks," he said. "Lower a boat, Mr. Gabriel, and lend a hand. It may be needed."

In a few minutes Gabriel was heading after the mate's boat. Neither boat hoisted sail. With four men at the sweeps, it was as much as the boats could do to gain on the brute. If the bear was not making fifteen miles an hour, I'm no judge.

Mr. Winchester kept pegging away, his bullets knocking up water all around the animal. One ball struck the bear in the back. That decided the animal to change its tactics. It quit running away and turned and made directly for its enemies.

"Avast rowing," sang out the mate.

The men peaked their oars, turned on the thwarts, and had their first chance to watch developments, which came thick and fast. Rabidferocity, blind fury, and deadly menace were in every line of that big white head shooting across the water toward them. The boat sat stationary on a dancing sea. The mate's rifle cracked repeatedly. The bullets peppered the sea, sending up little spurts of water all about the bear. But the beast did not notice them, never tried to dodge, never swerved aside—just kept rushing for the boat with the directness of an arrow.

It was a time of keen excitement for the men in the boat. They kept glancing with an "Oh, that Blücher or night would come" expression toward Gabriel's boat, which was doing all that oars could do to get into the fray, Big Foot Louis standing all the while in the bow with harpoon ready. The bobbing of his boat disconcerted the mate's aim. Though he was a crack shot, as he had often proved among the okchugs, I never saw him shoot so badly. But he kept banging away, and when the bear was within fifteen or twenty yards he got home a ball in its shoulder. The beast plunged into the air, snarling and clawing at the sea, then rushed again for the boat like a white streak. Itrammed into the boat bows-on, stuck one mighty paw over the gunwale, and with a snarling roar and a frothing snap of glistening fangs, leaped up and tried to climb aboard.

Just at this critical instant Gabriel's boat came into action with a port helm. Louis drove a harpoon into the beast behind the shoulder—drove it up to the haft, so that the spear-head burst out on the other side. At the same moment the mate stuck the muzzle of his rifle almost down the bear's throat and fired. The great brute fell back into the water, clawed and plunged and roared and clashed its teeth and so, in a whirlwind of impotent fury, died.

For a moment it lay limp and still among the lapping waves, then slowly began to sink. But Louis held it up with the harpoon line and the animal was towed back to the brig. It measured over seven feet in length and weighed 1,700 pounds—a powerful, gaunt old giant, every inch bone and sinew. Mr. Winchester retrieved the other bear from the ice floe. It was considerably smaller. The pelts were stripped off and the carcasses thrown overboard. The skins werein good condition, despite the earliness of the season. They were stretched on frames fashioned by the cooper, and tanned.

A week or so later we sighted a lone bear on an ice floe making a meal off a seal it had killed. It was late in the afternoon and one had to look twice before being able to make out its white body against the background of snow-covered ice. When the brig sailed within seventy-five yards the bear raised its head for a moment, took a squint at the vessel, didn't seem interested, and went on eating.

Resting his rifle on the bulwarks and taking careful aim, Mr. Winchester opened fire. The pattering of the bullets on the ice seemed to puzzle the bear. As it heard the missiles sing and saw the snow spurt up, it left the seal and began walking all about the floe on an investigation. Finally it reared on its hind legs to its full height. While in this upright position, a bullet struck it and turned it a sudden twisting somersault. Its placid mood was instantly succeeded by one of ferocious anger. It looked toward the vessel and roared savagely. Still thebullets fell about it, and now alive to its danger, it plunged into the sea and struck out for the polar pack a mile distant.

Mr. Winchester again lowered, with Gabriel's boat to back him up. The chase was short and swift. The boats began to overhaul the bear as it approached the ice, the mate's bullets splashing all about the animal, but doing no damage. As the brute was hauling itself upon the ice, a ball crashed into its back, breaking its spine. It fell back into the water and expired in a furious flurry. A running bowline having been slipped over its neck, it was towed back to the brig.

Not long afterward, while we were cruising in open water, a polar bear swam across the brig's stern. There was neither ice nor land in sight. Figuring the ship's deck as the center of a circle of vision about ten miles in diameter, the bear already had swum five miles, and probably quite a bit more, and it is certain he had an equal distance to go before finding any ice on which to rest. It probably had drifted south on an ice pan and was bound back for its home on the polar pack.

The bear made too tempting a target for the mate to resist, and he brought out his rifle and, kneeling on the quarter-deck, he took steady aim and fired. His bullet struck about two feet behind the animal. He aimed again, but changed his mind and lowered his gun.

"No," he said, "that fellow's making too fine a swim. I'll let him go."

Cleaving the water with a powerful stroke, the bear went streaking out of sight over the horizon. It is safe to say that before its swim ended the animal covered fifteen miles at the lowest estimate, and possibly a much greater distance.

One moonlight night a little later, while we were traveling under short sail with considerable ice about, a whale blew a short distance to windward. I was at the wheel and Mr. Landers was standing near me. "Blow!" breathed Mr. Landers softly. Suddenly the whale breached—we could hear it distinctly as it shot up from a narrow channel between ice floes. "There she breaches!" said Mr. Landers in the same low voice, with no particular concern. We thoughtthe big creature merely was enjoying a moonlight frolic. It breached again. This time its body crashed upon a strip of ice and flopped and floundered for a moment before sliding back into the water. Then it breached half a dozen times more in rapid succession. I had never seen a whale breach more than once at a time, even when wounded. Mr. Landers became interested. "I wonder what's the matter with that whale," he said.

To our surprise, two other black bodies began to flash up into the moonlight about the whale. Every time the whale breached, they breached, too. They were of huge size, but nothing like so large as the whale.

"Killers!" cried Mr. Landers excitedly.

Then we knew the whale was not playing, but fighting for its life. It leaped above the surface to a lesser and lesser height each time. Plainly it was tiring fast. When it breached the last time only its head and a small portion of its body rose into the air and both killers seemed to be hanging with a bulldog grip upon its lower jaw. What the outcome of that desperatebattle was we did not see. The whale and its savage assailants moved off out of eye-shot. But for some time after we had lost sight of the whale we could hear its labored and stertoreous breathing and its heavy splashes as it attempted to breach.

Killers, Mr. Landers told me, are themselves a species of rapacious, carnivorous whale, whose upper and lower jaws are armed with sharp, saw-like teeth. They are otherwise known as the Orca gladiator, and tiger-hearted gladiators of the sea they are. The great, clumsy bowhead with no teeth with which to defend itself, whose only weapons are its flukes and its fins, is no match for them. They attack the great creature whenever they encounter it, and when it has exhausted itself in its efforts to escape, they tear open its jaws and feast upon its tongue. The killer whale never hunts alone. It pursues its titanic quarry in couples and trios, and sometimes in veritable wolf-like packs of half a dozen. There is usually no hope for the bowhead that these relentless creatures mark for their prey.

THE STRANDED WHALE

Our fourth and last whale gave us quite a bit of trouble. We sighted this fellow spouting in a choppy sea among ice islands two or three miles off the edges of the polar pack. All three boats lowered for it. It was traveling slowly in the same direction the brig was sailing and about two miles from the vessel. It took the boats some time to work to close quarters. When the mate's boat was almost within striking distance, the whale went under. As frightened whales usually run against the wind, Mr. Winchester steered to windward. But the whale had not been frightened; it had not seen the boats. Consequently it failed to head into the wind, but did the unexpected by coming up to leeward, blowing with evident unconcern. This brought it nearest toGabriel, who went after it in a flash. After a sharp, swift run down the wind, we struck the whale, which dived and went racing under water for the ice pack. The dizzy rate at which it took out our line might have led us to believe it was not hurt, but we knew it was seriously wounded by the fountains of blood it sent up whenever it came to the surface.

The captain's signals from the brig, by this time, had headed the other boats in our direction, but they could not reach us in time to be of any assistance. The whale ran away with our tub of line and we sat still and watched the red fountains that marked its course as it headed for the big ice to the north.

Directly in the whale's course lay an ice floe about half a mile long, a few hundred yards wide and rising from five to ten feet above the surface. We naturally supposed the creature would dive under this and keep going for the main pack. To our surprise we soon saw fountain after fountain, red with blood, shooting up from the center of the floe. The whale evidently was too badly injured to continue its flight and had sought refuge beneath this strip of drifting ice.

Skin Boat of the Siberian Eskimos

Men were hurriedly landed from all the boats with harpoons and shoulder guns, leaving enough sailors on the thwarts to fend the boats clear of the ice. The landing parties clambered over the broken and tumbled ice, dragging the harpoon lines. We found the whale half exposed in a narrow opening in the center of the floe, all the ice about it red with clotted blood. Long John and Little Johnny threw two harpoons each into the big body and Big Foot Louis threw his remaining one. As a result of this bombardment, five tonite bombs exploded in the whale, which, with the harpoons sticking all over its back, suggested a baited bull in a Spanish bullring hung with the darts of the banderilleros. But the great animal kept on breathing blood and would not die. After all the harpoons had been exhausted, shoulder guns were brought into play. In all, twelve tonite bombs were fired into it before the monster gave a mighty shiver and lay still.

But with the whale dead, we still had a big problem on our hands. In some way the giantbulk had to be hauled out of the ice. This was a difficult matter even with plenty of time in which to do it. Night was coming on and it was the brig's custom in the hours of darkness to sail far away from the great ice pack with its edging of floating bergs and floes in order to avoid possible accident and to sail back to the whaling grounds on the morrow. This Captain Shorey prepared to do now. As a solution of the dilemma, an empty bread cask or hogshead was brought on deck and the name of the brig was seared in its staves with a hot iron in several places. This cask was towed to the floe, hauled up on the edge of the ice, and the long line of one of the harpoons sticking in the whale was made fast to it by means of staples. Thus the cask marked the floe in which the whale was lying.

It was growing dark when the brig went about, said good-night to the whale, and headed for open water to the south. We sailed away before a stiff breeze and soon cask and floe and the great white continent beyond had faded from view. When morning broke we were bowlingalong under light sail in a choppy sea with nothing but water to be seen in any direction. The great ice cap was somewhere out of sight over the world's northern rim. Not a floe, a berg, or the smallest white chunk of ice floated anywhere in the purple sphere of sea ringed by the wide horizon. Being a green hand, I said to myself, "Good-bye, Mr. Whale, we certainly have seen the last we'll ever see of you."

Let me make the situation perfectly clear. Our whale was drifting somewhere about the Arctic Ocean embedded in an ice floe scarcely to be distinguished from a thousand other floes except by a cask upon its margin which at a distance of a few miles would hardly be visible through strong marine glasses. The floe, remember, was not a stationary object whose longitude and latitude could be reckoned certainly, but was being tossed about by the sea and driven by the winds and ocean currents. The brig, on the other hand, had been sailing on the wind without a set course. It had been tacking and wearing from time to time. It, too, had felt the compulsion of the waves and currents. Sothroughout the night the brig had sailed at random and twenty miles or so away the whale in its floe had been drifting at random. Now how were we going to find our whale again? This struck me that morning on the open sea with neither whale nor ice in sight, as a problem certainly very nice, if not hopeless. The way it was solved was as pretty a feat of navigation as I ever saw.

When Captain Shorey came on deck after breakfast, he "shot the sun" through his sextant and went below to make his calculations. In a little while he came on deck again and stepped to the man at the wheel. The helmsman was steering full and by.

"How do you head?" asked Captain Shorey.

"Northwest," answered the sailor.

"Keep her northwest by west half west," said the captain.

For several hours the brig sailed steadily on this course. Along about 9 o'clock, we saw the peculiar, cold, light look above the sky line ahead which meant ice and which sailors call an "ice horizon," to be distinguished at a glance froma water horizon, which is dark. A little later, we sighted the white loom of the great ice continent. Later still, we picked up the bergs, floes, islands, and chunks of ice which drift forever along its edge.

The brig kept on its course. A floe of ice, looking at a distance like a long, narrow ribbon, lay ahead of us, apparently directly across our path. As we drew nearer, we began to make out dimly a certain dark speck upon the edge of the ice. This speck gradually assumed definiteness. It was our cask and we were headed straight for it. To a landlubber unacquainted with the mysteries of navigation, this incident may seem almost unbelievable, but upon my honest word, it is true to the last detail.

After the brig had been laid aback near the ice, a boat was lowered and a hole was cut in the bow of the whale's head. A cable was passed through this and the other end was made fast aboard the ship. Then under light sail, the brig set about the work of pulling the whale out of the ice. The light breeze fell away and the three boats were strung out ahead with hawsersand lent assistance with the oars. It was slow work. But when the breeze freshened, the ice began gradually to give, then to open up, and finally the whale was hauled clear and drawn alongside for the cutting in.

AND SO—HOME

It was on October tenth that we broke out the Stars and Stripes at our main gaff and squared our yards for home. Everybody cheered as the flag went fluttering up, for everybody was glad that the end of the long, hard voyage was in sight. Behring Straits which when we were about to enter the Arctic Ocean—sea of tragedy and graveyard of so many brave men and tall ships—had looked like the portals of inferno, now when we were homeward bound seemed like the gateway to the Happy Isles.

The four whales we had captured on the voyage had averaged about 1,800 pounds of baleen, which that year was quoted at $6.50 a pound. We had tried out all our whales except the last one and our casks were filled with oil. Our entire catch was worth over $50,000. The officers and boatsteerers made a pretty penny out ofthe voyage. The captain, I was told, had shipped on a lay of one-sixth—and got it. The sailors had shipped on the 190th lay—and didn't get it. That was the difference. At San Francisco, the forecastle hands were paid off with the "big iron dollar" of whaling tradition.

The homeward voyage was not a time of idleness. We were kept busy a large part of the time cleaning the bone of our last three whales—the bone from our first whale had been shipped to San Francisco from Unalaska. As we had at first stowed it away, the baleen was in bunches of ten or a dozen slabs held together at the roots by "white horse," which is the whaler name for the gums of the whale. These bunches were now brought up on deck and each slab of baleen was cut out of the gums separately and washed and scoured with cocoanut rind procured for the purpose in the Hawaiian Islands. Then the slabs were dried and polished until they shone like gun metal, tied into bales, and stowed under hatches once more.

A little south of King's Island in the northern end of Behring Sea, Captain Shorey set a coursefor Unimak Pass. We ran down Behring Sea with a gale of wind sweeping us before it and great billows bearing us along. When we bore up for the dangerous passage which had given us such a scare in the spring, we were headed straight for it, and we went through into the Pacific without pulling a rope. It was another remarkable example of the navigating skill of whaling captains. We had aimed at Unimak Pass when 700 miles away and had scored a bull's-eye.

Again the "roaring forties" lived up to their name and buffeted us with gale and storm. The first land we sighted after leaving the Fox Islands was the wooded hills of northern California. I shall never forget how beautiful those hills appeared and what a welcome they seemed to hold out. They were my own country again, the United States—home. My eyes grew misty as I gazed at them and I felt much as a small boy might feel who, after long absence, sees his mother's arms open to him. The tug that picked us up outside of Golden Gate at sundown one day seemed like a long lost friend. It was longafter darkness had fallen, that it towed us into San Francisco harbor, past the darkly frowning Presidio and the twinkling lights of Telegraph Hill, to an anchorage abreast the city, brilliantly lighted and glowing like fairyland. I never in all my life heard sweeter music than the rattle and clank of the anchor chain as the great anchor plunged into the bay and sank to its grip in good American soil once more.

My whaling voyage was over. It was an adventure out of the ordinary, an experience informing, interesting, health-giving, and perhaps worth while. I have never regretted it. But I wouldn't do it again for ten thousand dollars.

THE END

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