"THE TALE OF A WHALE."
"Give way, men!" implored Mr. Dacre anxiously, as the sailors bent to
their task vigorously.
There was small need to admonish the men. The affair had literally
become a race for life between the boat and the surging, battling
whales. As they came alongside Jack, who was clinging to the totem, he
gave an encouraging wave of the hand.
"Gee! I'm glad you've come. This water is pretty cold, I can tell
you."
He was hauled on board with all swiftness.
"Don't forget old 'Frozen Face,'" he begged anxiously as he heard his
uncle give orders to take to the oars again.
"No time to wait for him now, Jack," declared Mr. Dacre; "look there!"
He pointed behind them. Rushing toward the boat with the speed of an
express locomotive was a mighty head. It parted the water like an
oncoming torpedo boat. The boys gave a shout of alarm.
"It's coming straight for us!"
The sailors pulled on their oars till the stout ash wood bent as if it
had been bamboo. Suddenly there came a loud crack. One of the oars had
snapped. No doubt, as sometimes occurs, there was a flaw in the wood.
The man who was pulling it rolled off his seat into the bottom of the
boat.
As he did so, there came a second loud cry of affright. The whale was
almost upon them. On either side of its enormous blunt head was a
mountainous wall of water. Even if it did not hit them, the mighty
"wash" that its onrush made was likely to swamp the little craft,
deeply loaded as she was.
The snapping of the oar had cost valuable time. A collision appeared
to be inevitable. The second sailor seemed to be paralyzed with
fright. He stared stupidly at the great bulk bearing down upon them.
With a sharp exclamation Mr. Dacre seized an oar out of the fellow's
hand. In the stern of the boat was a "becket." He thrust the oar
through this, and with a few powerful strokes moved the boat forward.
It was then out of the direct path of the whale, but still in peril of
the mighty wave the great body of the creature upreared.
It was at this juncture that Tom proved his mettle. He grabbed the
other oar from the stupefied sailor's hands and thrusting it overboard
on the port side tugged on it with all his might.
"That's right! Good lad! Head her into it!" cried Mr. Dacre,
perceiving the object of Tom's maneuver, which was to force the boat
bow first against the towering wave sweeping down upon them. It was
the only thing to do, and Tom's experience had taught him to act
quickly.
Hardly had the boat's bow been swung till it was facing the onrushing
wave, than, with a roar and smother of foam, a huge black bulk shot
by, drenching them with spray. Carried away by excitement, Jack did a
foolish thing. Raising his revolver he fired point blank at the huge
wet side of the whale.
Instantly, as the bullet struck it, the great creature spouted. From
its nostrils two jets of water shot up with a roar like that of
escaping steam.
"Duck your heads!" roared out Mr. Chillingworth.
He had hardly time to get out the words before the spouted water came
down with the force of a cloudburst upon the boat. It was half filled,
but they had hardly time to notice this before the great wave that the
speeding whale had caused to rise swept under them. The small boat,
half full of water and overcrowded, rose sullenly. To the boys it
seemed that they were rushed dizzily heavenward and then let down into
an abyss that was fathomless. But a few seconds later a glad cry from
Mr. Dacre announced that the danger had passed. The boat had ridden
the wave nobly, and as for the killers and their quarry, all that
could be seen of them was a fast receding commotion in the water.
"Phew, what a narrow escape!" gasped out Tom. "I thought we were
goners sure that time!"
"Same here," agreed Sandy with deep conviction.
The strained faces of the others showed what they had thought. Mr.
Dacre relieved the tension by ordering all hands to get busy and bale
out the boat with some baling cans that were under the thwarts. They
were in the midst of this task when Jack gave a sudden outcry and
pointed over the side.
"What's up now, another whale?" cried Sandy, his face showing his
alarm.
"Whale nothing!" scoffed Jack. "Look, it's the 'Good Genius of the
Frozen North!'"
"The mascot!" cried Sandy.
"The mascot, sure enough," declared Mr. Dacre. "It undoubtedly helped
to save Jack's life."
"Yes, after carrying me overboard first!" snorted Jack.
Sure enough, alongside the boat old "Frozen Face" was bobbing serenely
about.
"We've got to take him back to the ship," declared Sandy.
"Yes, since he's inviting himself we can't be so impolite as to leave
him," said Mr. Chillingworth.
Accordingly, a line was made fast to the totem and he was towed back
to the ship and once more restored to office as official mascot in
the bow of the _Northerner_. But the ship did not get under way at
once following the adventure of part of her crew. The body of the
wounded whale still hung limply to her bow. Sailors with tackles had
to be called into requisition before the vast obstruction could be
cleared.
By this time, as if by magic, thousands of birds had appeared. They
fell upon the carcass, paying scant attention to the men at work on
it, and fought and tore and devoured flesh and blubber as if they were
famished. The captain said that they were whale birds, such as haunt
the track of ships engaged in whale trade for weeks at a time.
"Gracious, we certainly are having exciting times!" said Tom as the
ship once more got under way bound for her next port of call, Valdez,
to the east of the great Kenai Peninsula.
"I expect you boys will have more exciting times later than any you
have yet experienced," remarked the captain, who happened to be
passing along the deck at the time. "Your adventure with the whales
reminds me of a yarn that a certain old Captain Peleg Maybe used to
spin, of the perils of whaling. Like to hear it?"
The boys chorused assent. They knew something of the captain's ability
as a spinner of yarns.
"Well, it appears, according to the way old Captain Peleg used to tell
it, that his ship, the _Cachelot_, was becalmed in these seas while
out after whales," began the skipper with somewhat of a twinkle in his
eye. "One day he decided to enliven the monotony of the constant
doldrums by having his small dory lowered and going a-fishing after
halibut. Well, the boat was lowered away and the skipper pulled off to
some distance from the ship before he cast his lines.
"Now it seems strange, doesn't it, in an ocean five hundred miles wide
and a thousand feet deep, that when he cast his light anchor
overboard, the fluke of it should land in the blow-hole of a whale,
which isn't much bigger than a man's fist?"
"What's a blow-hole?" demanded Sandy.
"Why, the orifice through which a whale spouts or sounds, as whalemen
call it. You had a specimen of spouting when that whale Master Jack
shot at gave you a shower bath. But, according to Captain Peleg, that
was just what happened to him. The fluke of his anchor lodged right in
that whale's nostril.
"As soon as the anchor hit that whale where the apple hit the man who
discovered the law of gravitation, off he dashed, and naturally the
boat being fast to him, off dashed the boat, too. The line was drawn
as tight as the 'G' string on a bull fiddle.
"Cap'n Peleg was standing up in the stern just ready to cast a line
over, when 'bang!' the fun started. He almost went overboard, but
recovered himself in time to find that he was being drawn through the
water at 'sixty-'leven' miles an hour or more. He said afterward it
was the fastest he'd ever traveled. The wind hit his face as if he was
coasting down a forty-five grade mountainside in a runaway
six-cylinder auto without brakes or windshield.
"The cap'n said that the wind blew in his face so hard that every time
he tried to get to the bow of the boat to cut the line, he was blown
back again. All this time he couldn't think what he was hitched to. In
fact he didn't do much thinking at all. It wasn't till the whale had
gone what Peleg said must have been a hundred miles or more, that it
turned plum round and headed right back for his ship again.
"They made the trip in as fast time as if he'd been hitched to a
runaway cyclone. As they came near the ship there was the greatest
excitement on board that they'd had since they ran into a herd of
sperms up in Bering Sea.
"'Come aboard, cap!' yelled the mate.
"'Can't, you're only a way station,' yells back the skipper, 'and this
is the Alaskan flyer.'
"Just then, the way Cap'n Peleg told it, up comes the whale to spout.
Seems funny it didn't think of doing that before, but the way Peleg
told it, the creature hadn't. Anyhow, just as they were passing the
ship, up comes the whale and gives an almighty sneeze. That blew the
anchor out of its nose and off it goes, while Peleg takes an oar and
guides the boat alongside his ship after the most exciting ride he
ever had. The boat was going so fast when the whale cut loose, that he
didn't need to row her alongside; all he had to do was to steer her
like a launch and then he had to make two circles to reduce speed
before he dared try to reach his ship.
"Peleg said that when they hoisted the boat on deck they found she had
stood the trip all right, except that paint on her sides was blistered
and burned by reason of the friction kicked up by the terrific pace
they had traveled through the water."
The boys burst into a roar of laughter at the conclusion of this
surprising anecdote. The captain's eyes twinkled.
"Remember, I don't vouch for it," he said; "I'm only telling the tale
to you as it was told to me."
"The tale of a whale," chuckled Tom.
"A whale of a tale, I guess you mean," spoke Jack.
"Captain, what did you say the name of that skipper was?" inquired
Sandy innocently.
"Maybe," was the answer.
"Aweel," said the Scotch lad soberly, "I'm thinking he was well
named."