Chapter XVIIIn Which I Come Very Near Going Out of the Story
Chapter XVII
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 thatit 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 theboat 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 itout 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.
Chapter XVIIIIn Which We Realize the “Grind” of the Whaleman’s Life
Chapter XVIII
In Which We Realize the “Grind” of the Whaleman’s Life
According to Ben Gibson, they immediately gave me up for dead. The chance that my arm had not been torn away from the shoulder was small, and once thus crippled they expected the spouting blood to attract the sharks, and then—good night!
But while I remained conscious I had not even thought of those monsters; nor do I believe that a single one of the beasts came near me while I followed the whale toward the bottom of the sea.
The men in my boat were helpless. They might not aid me in the least. Nor did they know when I severed the line and started for the surface again. The weight of the hemp kept it down, although it stopped running out. Fortunately it uncoiled from my arm, or I would have been held down there and drowned.
They stared in horror over the sides of thewhaleboat, trying to distinguish any moving object in the depths, and as moment after moment passed they glanced at each other and shook their heads. I was lost. They had no hope of ever even seeing me again.
And then it was that the sharp eyes of the old boat-steerer descried my arm above the surface, not many yards away.
“There! look yon!” he yelled. “Pull, you lubbers!”
They shot the boat ahead and the old man seized me, plunging in his arm to the shoulder as I sank again. Ben had begun to strip off his clothing, bound to dive for me if the old man missed. But there was no need of that, and they hauled me over the side into the boat a deal more dead than alive.
Indeed, I fought when they brought me back to consciousness. It was awful suffering, that recovery—that return to the world which I had every reason to suppose I had said good-bye to. It was a good half hour before I began to realize where I was, and what was happening to me.
We could not go back to the ship, however. Whale fishing is a grim business. A struck whale has completely smashed a boat, leaving its crew struggling in the water, and theother boats have gone on after the monster and left their companions to paddle about on the wreckage as best they can until the leviathan is killed.
The other boats from the Scarboro were all busy and our boat was behind. We had lost our whale and the better part of two lines had gone with the iron. Before I could do more than lie on the bottom of the boat, under the men’s feet, and gasp, we were pulling after the wounded female again. She had come up for air and lay sullenly on the surface not half a mile away.
She was a Tartar; but old Tom got another iron in her, and later Ben Gibson killed her with two bomb-pointed lances. When the old bark came down upon us about night she was dead and we hauled her alongside—the first fish to be grappled to. But the other boats brought in three more. We were having great luck and for two more days worked like Trojans.
But the school of cachelots we had followed had disappeared then. The Scarboro sailed many a league farther south—and toward the Horn—before we raised a single whale. We were 40 degrees south then—below the de la Plata. I feared that the old bark would notput in at Buenos Ayres and there would be no chance of my returning home by steamship.
Not that I was yet tired of my work and the life we led. No, indeed. But I was anxious to hear from home, and I believed letters must be waiting me there at Buenos Ayres—and money, too.
No use to think of touching port, however, when the weather was so fine and whales were so infrequently met with. The whole crew had begun to get anxious. Mr. Robbins grumbled that he didn’t see the use of roaming about the South Atlantic, anyway. It was the Pacific that whales frequented.
“Why the last time I sailed in a windjammer,” declared the mate, “we were four weeks getting around the Horn from Santiago, and there wasn’t a day went over our heads that we didn’t see plenty of whales. The minute we got onto this side of Fuego we never saw a fin—and we ran to Bahia. Wouldn’t have known there ever was a whale in this darned old ocean.”
But the beginning of the cruise had been fortunate, and the whales had not entirely forsaken the Atlantic despite the grumbling of the crew. We killed two small humpedbackswithin the week and then came upon sperms again. At daybreak the lookout hailed and the sea seemed fairly alive with them.
We tumbled out and, with only a pannikin of coffee in our stomachs, and a cold bite in our fists, made off in the boats for the royal game. Ben Gibson’s boat had a good tally so far and we were not going to let the others beat us much. We had our pick of half a dozen sperms and we took after a bull that seemed promising.
We struck on and the wounded whale ran a little way in fright, trying its best to shake out the harpoon. Finding this impossible, despite its porpoise-like gambols, the whale sounded; then occurred one of the strangest happenings that can be imagined. The bull went down, and we paid out a goodly portion of line. Finally the line stopped running, but the whale did not rise.
“What do you know about this, Tom?” demanded the young second mate. “That critter’s gone to sleep down there, hasn’t it?”
“It’ll be drowned!” exclaimed the old harpooner. “That’s what’ll happen to it.”
“Drowned!” cackled one of the crew. “What you givin’ us, old hardshell? Drowna whale, eh? That’s like the boy that pumped water on the frog to drown him.”
“You wait and see,” growled old Tom. “If that bull don’t come up pretty soon we’ll have a circus with it, now I tell ye!”
The whale gave no sign. We tried hauling on the line, and of course it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s sure got its feet stuck in the mud down there,” admitted the second mate, and he stood up and wigwagged frantically for the ship.
There were only four boats out and the captain himself chanced to be aboard. He knew old Tom would not give up anything easy, and so he brought the Scarboro into hailing distance and we told him what had happened. We had caught a Tartar; the whale wouldn’t come to the surface and we couldn’t let go without losing our line and iron. It was no use jerking on that line. One can’t play a whale like a rock bass!
We rowed to the ship and the line was carried aboard and tagged onto a winch. We got at it right then and, before long, up came the dead body of a whale. It was a good sized one—indeed, I thought at the start that it was bigger looking close beside the bark than it had seemed when we struck on.
And pretty soon we found out the reason why it seemed different. We couldn’t find the harpoon Tom Anderly had thrown into it! The line was found jammed to the back of the whale’s mouth and wound round its body—whales will roll over and over when struck just as an old salmon will when hooked.
That whale was drowned. A whale isn’t a fish, anyway, and this one had been under water so long that it was too late, as Ben Gibson said, to bring forward any “first aid to the drowned” business!
What puzzled us all—from Captain Hi down to the cook’s cat—was what had become of the iron?
“And, by jingoes!” cried the second mate, “we ain’t got all our line back.”
This was plainly a fact. When the whale was grappled onto the bark’s side and the line unwound, we found that it still hung down into the sea and was quite taut.
“This blamed critter was anchored!” growled Tom Anderly. “And he dragged his anchor at that.”
“Get onto the winch, boys,” said Captain Rogers. “Let’s see what’s hung to it now.”
We wound in the line and up came the whale that we had actually struck! Theharpoon still held in its body. Good reason why I had thought the first whale seemed different from the one we had chased.
Of course, this whale was drowned, too. When it sounded, the other whale must have crossed our line while feeding with open mouth. Feeling the strange sensation of the hemp in the back of its mouth, the creature had instinctively closed its jaws and, in the struggle, wound the line about its body and been drowned.
Of course, this had kept the first whale down until it had drowned and, marvelous to relate, we had got the both of them—and a tidy addition to our cargo they proceeded to make. The luck of the second mate’s boat became proverbial after that haul.
But despite our luck, the real grind of the whaleman’s life was taking hold of us now. It was work—hard, bone labor—if we “had luck,” and it was likewise work if we missed and rowed hour after hour after an elusive sperm or, at the end of the day, had to row empty handed back to the bark.
Ben Gibson loved money; but he admitted to me that a fifteen hundred dollar prize for the voyage would scarcely pay him for the work and grind of our daily life aboard the Scarboro.
Chapter XIXIn Which Is Reported a Series of Misadventures
Chapter XIX
In Which Is Reported a Series of Misadventures
It began much as other busy days had begun for us of the Scarboro, since we got upon the whaling grounds; the fires under the trying-out kettles were scarcely quenched when, just at daybreak, came the hail of the man in the crowsnest:
“On deck, sir! Ah-h blows!”
“Where away?” bawled Captain Rogers, who seemed tireless himself and expected every man and boy aboard to catch the inspiration of a sight that had now become terribly commonplace to us—a spouting cachelot.
“Two p’ints on yer weather bow, sir.”
The captain started up the rigging and in a moment the lookout repeated:
“Thar she blo-o-ows!”
“I see her!” bawled the captain. Then turning, his roar penetrated to the fo’castle: “All hands on deck! Tumble up here! Lively now! Sperm whale, ain’t she, John?”
“Aye, sir, sir!” returned the lookout. “There she breaches!” as one of the creatures up-ended. A dozen had suddenly come into sight—appearing like imps in a pantomime—“from the vasty deep.”
As Captain Hi came down Mr. Robbins reached the quarter.
“Seems a powerful sight of whales, Mr. Robbins,” the old man said, passing the mate the glasses.
Mr. Robbins went up and took a good squint all around the horizon.
“Three hundred if there’s one, Cap’n!” he declared with reverent enthusiasm.
“Does seem so, doesn’t it?” admitted the captain.
The crew had tumbled up and were getting the boats ready. Only four were going out, but the skipper stayed us until we had had breakfast.
“We’re going into a man’s job this morning,” he grunted. “We want to be prepared for it.”
It might be that some of the boat crews wouldn’t be back at the ship for eighteen hours. It often happened, and pulling a heavy ash oar on an empty stomach is not an inspiring job.
Inside of five minutes after the first hailthe whales spouting from one end of the skyline to the other. We had run into the biggest herd of sperms that the oldest whaleman on the Scarboro had ever seen. Maybe we didn’t feel excited! At such times as this one forgets the “grind.” There was both money and excitement ahead of us. We actually sloughed off the weariness we had felt after a steady twenty-four hours’ spell at the try-out kettles.
We lowered and spread out, fanwise, from the bark and made for the whales. No need of racing this morning. As Tom said, it looked as though a harpoon thrown into the air in almost any direction would hit a whale when it came down!
I was eager to throw an iron myself. I had the physique for it, being such a stocky fellow. And the hard life I had lived since being swept out to sea in myWavecresthad agreed with me. My muscles were like wire cables, I was burned as black as a negro, and there was scarcely a man aboard the bark whom I could not have flung in a fair wrestle.
“Give Clint his chance, Tom,” said Mr. Gibson, as the boat-steerer came forward. “If he misses, you can throw a second iron.”
I was tickled enough at this. Old Tom had given me plenty of advice before about thehandling of the harpoon, and I tried to remember all of his teaching as I released my bow oar and took up the first iron.
Perhaps it would be interesting to my readers if I told them something about this weapon of the whaleman. The bomb-lance and gun are all very well; but the harpoon is the real weapon on which the whaleman must depend. This iron must be right and the line attached to it must be right, or the best of harpooners will make a poor tally.
The whale line is a fine manila rope 1-1/2 inches thick. It is stretched and coiled with the greatest care into tubs, some holding two hundred fathoms, some a hundred fathoms. The harpoons are fixed to poles of rough, heavy wood, every care being taken to make them as strong as possible. And their weight necessitates a harpooner being chosen from among the biggest and strongest men in the ship.
The harpoon blade is made like an arrow, but with only one barb, which turns on a steel pivot. The point of the harpoon blade is ground as sharp as a razor on one side and blunt on the other. The shaft is about thirty inches long and made of the best soft iron so that it is practically impossible to break it. Three irons were always placed in our boat,fitted one above the other in the starboard bow. If the harpooner missed with one iron, or if there was time to fling a second, he could reach and get it handily.
In the old days the lances were slung in the port bow. It was with the lance the whale was actually killed. The harpoon only serves to make the boat fast to its prize. The lances were slender spears about four feet long with broad points. The old-time whalemen were rowed right up to the side of the ironed monster, after it had tired itself out fighting, and the officer in the bow had to churn the lance up and down in the great beast until the point reached a vital spot.
For this reason there were many more serious accidents in the old times than now. In each boat belonging to the Scarboro there was stowed a lance-gun in place of the lances. The bomb-lance is surer than the old-time lance, and keeps the boat and crew farther from the seat of peril.
I rose up as soon as we drove in near the big bull that we had been approaching. And itwasa big fellow! I think it was as large a sperm as we had seen. Its upper jaw and head was covered with lumps and scars of old wounds. Along the flank was a half-healed, jagged gash, too.
“That old boy’s collided with something,” grumbled Tom Anderly in my ear. “I believe he’s a rogue.”
I had heard of ancient, isolated he-elephants being called “rogue;” but I did not know before that whalemen believe that certain old bull whales are just as savage and revengeful as tigers. Indeed, among all wild creatures—either on land or in the sea—there seem to be ancient bulls that go off from their kind and sulk. They easily “run amuck”—perhaps are really insane. To attack them is far more perilous than to attack a herd of their normal fellows.
This old bull whale, however, had not deserted the society of his fellows; but he proved to be as ugly a customer as we could have found in all that school of three hundred or more sperms!
“He looks bad to me,” whispered Tom Anderly. “He’s a fighter. He’s probably smashed more boats in his time than the old hooker carries when she’s nested up full. Gosh! look at the warts on him.”
“And that gash in his side,” said Ben. “How do you suppose that happened?”
“Looks just like he’d rubbed against a copper keel,” declared the old man.
I thought they were trying to scare me. But I learned later that it was not an uncommon thing for an old whale to use a ship’s keel to rub himself against—it scrapes off the barnacles!
I just gave old Tom a grim look, however, and seized the harpoon. We were creeping up on the bull and I intended to make a good cast. The creature was weaving slowly along and not paying any attention to our boat at all. My! he did look enormous. The nearer we came to him the more threatening was his appearance. He was more than a hundred feet long, I was sure. He would have weighed as much as twenty-five of the biggest elephants that ever showed in a menagerie.
I am free to confess I feltqueer, as that slate-colored monster loomed up before our bow. With one flop of its tail it could smash the craft and give us all a ducking—perhaps kill half the crew. Many of the old whalers’ yarns I remembered as I poised that heavy shaft.
But then old Tom whispered: “Now!” I let go with all my might. The harpoon sunk into the huge bull until half its staff was hidden! I had made as pretty a cast as ever Tom Anderly could himself.
“Back all!” shouted Gibson.
Our craft shot backward while the bull gave a startled plunge forward, and the line began to run out fast. In half a minute the beast sounded and we prepared for a long fight. But suddenly he was up again and shot two or three geysers of water into the air. He lay still and we began to take in the slack.
“Call this a fight?” muttered the second mate, with scorn.
I had slipped into my seat and the mate was changing with Tom again, bent upon using the gun for the finishing touches. Suddenly the old bull started. He did not come for the boat but headed directly for the bark, lying not more than half a mile away. He went so fast we could scarcely see the harpoon line. He made the sea about him boil, and the waves in his wake (for we were close up to him) almost swamped us.
“What’s he going to do?” screamed Gibson.
“Holy mackerel!” groaned the stroke oarsman. “He’s going to bunt the old hooker.”
“That’s what he’s up to,” agreed Tom Anderly; “he’s after revenge. And if he hits the Scarbororight, we’re likely to have a nice time rowing ashore, boys—you can take my word for that!”
Chapter XXIn Which Our Chapter of Bad Luck Is Continued
Chapter XX
In Which Our Chapter of Bad Luck Is Continued
That old bull was sure a fighting whale. The annals of whaling do not lack records of such old rogues, as witness the sinking of the Kathleen, of New Bedford on the “12-40 ground” east of the Barbadoes in 1901. A bad whale can do a lot of damage besides smashing whaleboats. Thus far we had suffered no loss from the monsters which the Scarboro was hunting; but as this old bull shot like an arrow for the scarred side of the bark, which was hove to less than half a mile away, it did look as though she was due to get a bad bump.
We were on a short line, however, for the bull had not sounded deeply. Ben Gibson sprang up with the bomb gun and tried to put a lance in the beast at that distance. It only scratched him, I suppose, but itdidseem to swerve him from his course.
Instead of striking the Scarboro, he ran pasther stern and circled around her. We were snatched after the whale at racing speed and saw the fellows aboard hanging over the rail grinning at us—like spectators at a horse race.
“Them sculpins wouldn’t grin so broad if the critter had bumped the Scarboro,” declared Tom Anderly.
The beast lay quiet for a bit and we pulled up on him. Before Gibson could get him with the lance gun again, he sounded.
“Now, by gravy!” exclaimed old Tom, who had a wealth of expletives in him when he was excited, “look out for squalls.”
“He’s been squally enough already, hasn’t he?” demanded our young officer.
“You ain’t seen the end yet, sir,” returned the old man.
“Well, I bet Idosee the end——”
He broke off with a sharp intake of breath. Then: “Stern all!” he ejaculated.
Up through the green sea came a huge shadow. We could not shoot the boat back in time to clear the monster. The whale had turned and shot up under the boat!
The boat jarred as the prolonged lower jaw of the bull whale struck her keel forward. There was a mighty rush of waters, like a cataract; the whaleboat was flung aside, andBen Gibson shot over the bow and fell right into the open mouth of the whale!
I know I screamed something—I don’t know what I said. The boat was shooting back under the impetus of the oars, and we escaped overturning.
But I had seen Ben fall and saw him disappear into the cavern of the creature’s mouth. I saw, too, the jaws come together once, and I swear our second mate was in the bull’s mouth when it closed!
But the next moment the maw of the beast opened and in the swirl of foam and blood-streaked water I caught sight of the senseless Gibson.
“Pull!” I yelled.
And although I had no business to give a command, the men obeyed me and the boat shot forward again. I seized our second mate by his shirt collar. In a moment I had lifted him into the boat.
At the same moment Tom Anderly got forward, seized the gun which poor Gibson had dropped, and sent a bomb-lance into the whale at so short a distance that it seemed as though we might have touched him by putting out a hand.
But that fighting whale died hard. Itleaped after the bomb exploded and again we were almost overturned.
“Cut loose! Let the beast go!” cried some of the men.
But Tom Anderly would not lift the boat hatchet. To cut a whale free, unless it becomes absolutely necessary, is “against the religion” of any old whaler. As for myself, I was bending over the injured second mate, trying to revive him.
Ben Gibson had been through a most awful experience. Old Cap’n Wood, of Nantucket, had been in the mouth of a whale, and lived to tell the story. I remembered of reading about his experience. But it was a most awful accident and I feared indeed that the young officer was dead.
Therefore I was not really cognizant of what was going on until half the crew of our boat began to shriek a multitude of commands and advice. Then I looked up and saw that the bull whale for a second time was charging the Scarboro.
It was plain the old fellow realized that the bark was his enemy. He paid no attention to the boat that was tearing through the sea behind him. And we was so near the bark now that nothing could be done to swerve the the fighting whale!
Straight on dashed the big bull, at a speed that snubbed the whaleboat’s nose under water, for we were close up to the beast. Straight on, with tremendous headway and a fearful, gathering momentum, headed for the grimy, battle-scarred broadside of the old Scarboro. Those aboard of the bark could do nothing. She was still hove to. The fighting whale had missed her by a hand’s breadth once before, but this time he did not swerve.
“Cut loose, Tom!” I yelled, finally understanding—as did the other men with us—the menacing disaster. In a few seconds we would smash into the bark’s hull, whether the whale dived or not.
But the bull didn’t dive, and Tom swung the axe. His quick stroke severed the line and every man in our boat was awake to the impending catastrophe. Stroke sprang for the long steering oar. The rapid swing of it barely swerved the heavy boat out of the course of sure disaster.
On went the released whale. Plumb his head smashed against the hull of the big bark. The collision was a most awful shock. Consider a heavy train pushing a mogul locomotive down grade ahead of it, and the wholething ramming another train—the result could have been no more awful.
The three-inch plank of which the vessel’s side was made splintered like the thinnest veneer. The ends of big timbers in her hull were ground to pulp and matchwood. With a terrific splash of his tail, the fighting whale rolled over, after rebounding from the bark, and lay, seemingly stunned!
The bark, driven over almost on her beam ends, righted slowly. We knew the whale must be as good as dead, but we had no thought for him then. The smashing of the Scarboro might mean torture and death to every man of her crew. We were out of the track of general steamship routes, and far, far from land. If the bark sank, we were done for!
Chapter XXIIn Which the Wavecrest Sets Sail Again
Chapter XXI
In Which the Wavecrest Sets Sail Again
Nobody gave any further thought to the whale. My own eyes were set upon that yawning wound in the hull of the old Scarboro. After the shock of the collision the bark righted slowly, and when she did so the sea rushed into the hole in a most awful fashion.
We rowed rapidly toward the bark and made fast to the hoisting tackle. We had a sling let down for the second mate, who was still unconscious. Before we got him on the deck and got aboard ourselves, Captain Rogers had all hands remaining aboard at work to stop the dreadful leak.
Had all six of the boats been out at this time I fully believe the Scarboro would have gone to the bottom. Or, if there had been any sea to speak of, she would have gone down inside of two hours.
But being right on the job, as you might say, Captain Hi lost few seconds in the work ofseeking to save the bark—and, incidentally, all hands. He did not even take the time to see how badly his nephew was hurt just then. As our crew came over the rail he set them to work, too.
“Take poor Ben below and let cookee do what he can for him,” he bawled to me. “I want you to deck here, Webb.”
There was a light breeze, and he had some canvas put on her and got the old bark hove over so that the hole the whale had smashed (it was right at the water-line) was where it could be got at. Of course, it was impossible at first to do anything from inside. There were two men on the pumps and they kept steadily at work, now I tell you.
Mr. Rudd, the carpenter, was not aboard; but Captain Webb did all that could be done at the moment. He put slings under the arms of two men and let them down the canted side of the craft, on either side of the great gap. Then canvas was let down—three thicknesses of heavy, new cloth—and this was laid over the hole after the splinters were cut away, and tacked to the hull, cleats being used to hold it in place all the way around.
Meanwhile the tar-buckets had been heated up, and those fellows gave the canvas and thehull all about it a good coating of tar. We ran several miles on this tack, and until the job was completed. Then, when the men and the tar-buckets were inboard again, the Scarboro was put over on the other tack and we beat back toward the whaleboats.
I can’t say that no water came in; but we could keep the water down by working steadily at the pumps; and before night we had the other boats aboard, and three whales—including the old bull that had done the damage—strung together nearby. We could do nothing toward cutting up and trying-out the whales until the bark was safe.
A sharp blow just then would have fixed us, and that’s a fact. Mr. Rudd and his helpers went below and broke out enough cargo to get at the hole stove in her side. Meanwhile we had to keep the pump brakes moving and the water that flowed from the pipes and out at the hawser-holes was as clear as the sea itself. The old bark had settled a good bit, and we were by no means out of danger.
Here we were, by the Captain’s reckoning, all of four hundred miles southwest of Cape St. Antonio, which is south of the huge mouth of the de la Plata. To set sail for the principal port of Argentina—or any other port—wouldnot suit Captain Hiram Rogers a little bit. Nor am I at all sure that, crippled as she was, the bark could have got to land.
Mr. Rudd would be some days repairing the damage done by the fighting whale. And meanwhile, what was going to become of poor Ben Gibson?
For our cheerful, boyish second mate was badly hurt. Consider: the whale had actually shut his jaws on Ben, and that one crunch should, by good rights, have finished the young fellow.
But he was reserved for a better fate, it seemed. When the captain overhauled his nephew, he found that he had sustained, beside the scalp wound from which he bled so much, a broken arm, a lacerated leg above the knee, and several broken ribs. These ribs and possible internal injuries are what feazed Captain Hi. He was no mean “catch as catch can” surgeon; most whaling captains have had to tackle serious medical and surgical difficulties in their careers.
Ben, however, was the skipper’s own flesh and blood—his sister’s child. He couldn’t face that sister (she was a widow) if he brought Ben back to New Bedford a cripple for life. And the whale had certainly smashed him up badly.
“Clint Webb,” he said to me, in a most serious tone, when he had made his examination of the poor fellow, “we are in a bad hole. It’ll take a week o’ fair weather for the carpenter to make us all tight again—and we ain’t even sure of the weather. Then, there’s the three whales alongside. We can’t throw them away. The crew would have cause to complain. But this boy ought to have doctor’s care.”
I agreed with him, but had nothing to offer.
“I couldn’t sail for the Plate now,” he ruminated, “if I wanted to. Repairs of the ship must come before repairs of the boy. Webb! it’s a good season, and the winds are fair. Would you make an attempt to get Ben to Buenos Ayres in that sloop of yours?”
“In a minute!” I declared, quickly, for the suggestion went hand in hand with the desire I had been milling in my mind for days.
“I’ll mark you a chart. You can’t miss of it. Anyhow, you’ll hit land if you keep on going. There are fine hospitals at Buenos Ayres. I’d feel more as though I’d done my duty by Ben if I got him there. I’ll find you a man to go along. Two of you can work that sloop prettily.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” I agreed.
He bustled away and brought back old Tom Anderly. I couldn’t have wished for anybody else. In a quarter of an hour we had agreed on everything. Tom and Ben were to stick around Buenos Ayres until they heard from Captain Rogers, or the Scarboro put in for them. Of course, I would be free once I got to land, unless I wanted to stick the voyage out and claim my lay at the end. However, I was to have one hundred dollars in gold from the captain, and the sloop, whichever way I decided.
Captain Rogers had set Ben’s arm and dressed his other wounds. Ben was conscious, but in great pain from the broken ribs. He knew what we were going to attempt, and he was willing to trust himself to old Tom and me. And the next morning, as soon as it was light, theWavecrestwas slung over the side, her mast stepped, and the riggers got to work on her. By noon she was provisioned and everything was ready for our cruise.
Ben Gibson was let down into the cockpit of theWavecreston a mattress and was got comfortably into the cabin without any trouble. There was a steady breeze, but the sea was calm. The crew bade us godspeed and the skipper wrung my hand hard; but only said:
“Do the best you can for him, Webb. I’m trustin’ to you and Tom to pull the lad through.”
We got the canvas up and sheered off from the Scarboro’s side. We could hear the muffled hammering of the carpenter and his mates inside her wounded hull. They were fighting to keep the old hooker above the seas. As we drifted away from the whaling bark I was not at all sure that we should ever see her above the seas again.
Our canvas filled and the sloop got a bone in her teeth and walked away with it just as prettily as ever she had sailed in Bolderhead Harbor.
“She’s a beauty boat, lad,” growled old Tom Anderly. “And she’s taking us out o’ range o’ them carcasses—Whew! they sartainly do begin to stink. I don’t begredge the boys their job of cutting them whales up when they git at it.”
We left the gulls and the sharks behind, with the bark and the rotting whales, and soon they were all far away—mere specks upon the horizon.
Chapter XXIIIn Which We Sail the Silver River and I See a Face I Know
Chapter XXII
In Which We Sail the Silver River and I See a Face I Know
I had covered, perhaps, almost as much open sea when I was blown out of Bolderhead in the sloop, as now lay between the Scarboro and Cape St. Antonio. But, as you might say, I had taken that first trip blindly. This time I had my eyes open and all my wits about me—and I knew that we had taken a big contract. TheWavecrestwas a mere cockle-shell in which to cross such a waste of open sea as that which lay between us and the mouth of Rio de la Plata.
But theWavecrestwas a seaworthy craft, and that indeed had been proved. She had been freshly caulked while she lay on the deck of the Scarboro, and her seams did not let in enough water to keep her sweet. She sailed well in either a light or heavy wind and I really had no fear that we should not make the great seaport of the Argentine Republic all in good time.
It was bad for poor Ben Gibson, however. The sun was hot and in the cabin the atmosphere was sometimes stifling. However, the captain had warned me to keep the fellow as quiet as possible and not to move him if it could be helped before we reached our destination.
Old Tom sailed the sloop most of the time, and I gave my attention to the wounded youth. But we tried to keep something like watch and watch. We only slept by snatches, however, and never a cloud appeared in the sky as big as a man’s hand that we did not watch it cautiously. As for sail, or steam, we saw neither till we raised the cloudy headland that marked Cape St. Antonio on the skyline.
It was a pretty tame cruise to write about, for nothing really occurred. We were only on the watch for some untoward happening; that made it nerve wracking. But even when we sighted the spur of land which we knew marked the southern boundary of the de la Plata—the widest mouth of any river on the globe, for it is not masked by islands at all—we were not out of danger. The peril of gales still menaced us. We had many miles to sail yet before we reached Buenos Ayres.
Indeed, we got a stiff blow before sighting Point Piedras; but it favored us after all, and theWavecrestran before it at a spanking pace. We had sighted plenty of other craft now—both sail and steam. One great, red-funneled steamship came in behind us, and at first we thought it was making for Montevideo, which is on the northern side of the river; but finally old Tom made out the steamer and what she was.
“It’s one of the Bayne Line steamers from Boston,” he declared. “I know them red pipes. They touch at Para, Bahia, and otherports. She’s bound for Buenos Ayres now—no doubt of it.”
The little squall that had kicked up something of a sea had now passed. The great steamship overhauled us rapidly. I chanced to be at the helm and I kept my head over my shoulder a good deal of the time, watching the approach of the great, rusty-hulled craft. Somehow I felt as though I had some connection with the boat. A foolish feeling, perhaps; yet I could not shake it off.
TheWavecrestwas bowling along nicely so I could give my attention to the big ship, which I soon made out to be the Peveril. Old Tom was right. She was one of the Bayne Line ships, coming from Boston—coming from home, as you might say! To tell the truth, I was a good bit home-sick.
I let my mind wander back to Bolderhead. Circumstances had made it possible for me to leave the Scarboro, and I was now nearing Buenos Ayres where I had written my mother to cable me money at the American consul’s bureau. I had got enough of whaling. Adventure and travel is all right; but I had had a taste of it, and found it to be merely an alias for hard work!
“It’s me for home on the first steamship going north,” I told myself, wisely. “I’ve had adventure enough to last me a while.”
I was sailing on the Silver River, as the exploring Spaniards had first called this noble stream, and there might be a lot of fun and hard work ahead of me if I remained with oldTom and Ben Gibson until they rejoined the Scarboro. But I wasn’t tied to them. I’d probably have plenty of money with which to pay my passage home; and just then I wanted to see my mother, and Ham Mayberry, and lots of other folk in Bolderhead, more than I wanted to be knocking about in strange quarters of the world.
I glanced around at the steamship again. She had almost caught up to us, for although the sloop had a fair wind, the Peveril was sailing three lengths to our one. On and on she came, the smoke pouring from her stacks. Her high, rusty side loomed up not more than a cable’s length away. I could see the passengers walking on her upper decks, and the officers on her bridge. Below, the ports were open, their steel shutters let down on their chains like drop-shelves.
Some of the crew were looking out idly upon theWavecrestas the steamship slipped by. A cook in a white cap came to one port and threw some slop into the sea. As he emptied the bucket my eyes roved to the very next port aft. There somebody sat peeling vegetables. I could see the flash of the knife in the sunlight, and the long paring of potato peel curling off the knifeblade.
It was an idle glance I had turned upon the vegetable peeler. He was only a cook’s apprentice, or scullion. There was no reason why my gaze should have fastened upon him with interest. Yet my eyes lingered, andsuddenly the fellow raised his head and his face was turned toward the open port.
The mental shock I experienced made me inattentive to my helm and theWavecrestfell off. Old Tom sang out to know what I was about, and silently I brought the sloop’s nose back again. The steamship had slipped by us and the wake of her set the little craft to jumping.
My mind was in a fog. I steered mechanically. The face I had seen at the open port of the Peveril was still before me, as in a vision. I knew I had not been tricked by any hallucination. I had not even been thinking of the fellow at the time. And I was sure that the cook’s assistant aboard the Peveril had not seen and recognized me.
But I could not be mistaken in my identification of that face at the port. It was that of my cousin, Paul Downes—Paul Downes, here on the de la Plata, thousands of miles from home, and evidently working in the menial position of cook’s helper on the steamship, Peveril! Is it to be wondered that I was amazed?