might have appalled any fish, but he was hungry, and the fat blubber
was tempting. His own three fathoms of lean, hard flank seemed meager
enough.
With a quick movement he turned and made straight for the cachalot.
The monster opened his mouth by dropping his long, thin under jaw, and
made a chop at him, but he swerved and sank his triangles deep in the
blubber of the animal’s neck, covering a good hundred pounds of him.
The whale plunged wildly, lashing right and left with his powerful
tail, finally throwing himself clear of the sea and falling again with
a stupendous crash. But the shark held grimly on. Rolling over and over
the animal tried to throw himself clear of that grip. The blubber was
tearing out in a huge ribbon where the triangles had cut it clear, and
the blood was showing upon the white fat. The sea was a surf upon a
submerged reef. And all the time the shark jerked and wrenched, dodged
and pulled until the huge mouthful came clear.
Quickly the whale turned to chop with that long jaw studded with huge
points of ivory. Quicker still slewed the shark. The whale missed, and
the shark again sank those terrible cutters deep in the hole already
made in the animal’s neck. This time it was flesh that felt the bite,
and the pain maddened the leviathan. With a bellow like a bull he
started off, dragging the shark along with him as though he had been
but a tiny pilot fish.
On and on the great whale tore, while the shark hung helpless by his
side. The whale was doing all the work, and all he had to do was to
hold on. Gradually the pace eased a little, and finally stopped. Then
down, straight down into the abyss below, plunged the leviathan.
But even here the shark still held his grip. The pressure became
enormous in that cold blackness, but he could stand it as well as the
monster.
Then, after an hour of twisting and rolling, they came quickly to the
surface again, the whale somewhat tired. Now was the shark’s chance.
Letting go his hold he made a sudden fresh chop to tear the bite out,
and he backed away with a huge piece of flesh. The whale turned as
quickly as possible, but he was tired now, and the shark chopped him
again and again, savagely tearing out great pieces of blubber and beef.
The sea was dyed red, and the surging of flukes and threshing about
brought several wandering sharks from the depth to see what it all
meant. One of these, a huge killer, joined the fight against the whale,
and soon he also chopped and tore the wound into a great hole. The
fight now became general, as the strangers took a hand. The worried
whale rolled and smote right and left, but our shark tore him deeper
and deeper.
One of the newcomers ventured across the whale’s head, and was promptly
seized in the long thin jaw that swung up and cut him in halves. All
except the first assailant left the whale to eat the unfortunate shark,
and the two fighters were alone again for some minutes.
The whale now became weaker, and except for an occasional lunge lay
quietly beating the sea with his flukes.
The shark now began to bolt large pieces of him at his leisure, and the
rest seeing him at work came sneaking back again. They formed a circle
around the dying monster, and rushed in and chopped him whenever they
dared. In a little while he began swimming slowly in a circle, and
then finally stopped. He gave one final sidelong blow with his flukes
that broke every bone in a shark’s body that happened in its way. Then
he lay still and rolled upon his sides. He was dead. And now from the
lonely depths where all was apparently a void, the scavengers came
sneaking forth.
Big sharks and little sharks, hammerhead and shovel-nose, all began to
circle about the huge carcass, and watch for a place to chop a piece of
blubber out. They crowded and jostled each other, and sometimes even
fought for a place alongside. Above them the whale-birds screamed and
squawked as they hovered and lit for an instant to tear at the juicy
covering of the carcass.
Our fighter had by this time gorged himself with several hundred pounds
of whale beef, and being tired from the exertion of the encounter, he
swam slowly away.
In the following weeks of cruising he found smaller game, but he now
felt a contempt for all other creatures. He had vanquished the largest
animal alive, and the feeling that he could conquer anything made him
slow to tackle smaller fish.
For months he cruised to the westward and skirted the shores of the
continent, finding enough to eat around the river mouths. In one harbor
where there was much offal he lived for several years, only going to
sea for a draught of fresh salt water now and then. He grew steadily in
size until he reached full twenty feet in length.
His hide was now of a dull grayish-brown, shading to white on his
belly. Upon it the little hard lumps of bony substance thickened. His
jaws were nearly three feet wide, and he now had six rows of triangles,
the outside and largest being over an inch on a side clear of the gums.
His eyes were large and bright, and his nose broad and sensitive.
Several ugly little fish followed him around wherever he went. They had
flat tops to their heads, and looked like black corrugated chunks of
rubber with tails to them, the corrugated part of their heads being on
top. With these slits they sucked strongly to the shark when he swam,
making him tow them about without any exertion on their part. His hide,
however, was too thick to mind a little thing like that, and he finally
came to know each one so well by sight that he never made a chop at
them. They were about the only living things he let pass him.
As time passed he developed a taste for company. A desire to meet his
kind came upon him, and he left the lazy life in the harbor and went to
sea again.
He traveled through the West Indies, and there one bright hot day on
the reef he met a shark that appeared most friendly. It was a new
feeling that came upon him at the meeting, a desire to live in the
companionship of the stranger for a time. He even found himself letting
her take the first choice of some barracuda he had killed, and from one
thing leading to another he waxed very affectionate.
They traveled together during a moon, and then they found a warm spot
on the Bahama Bank where the hot stream flowed past beautiful coral
hills that rose from the blue depths.
Here they lingered for some time, his mate giving birth to five
soft-skinned little sharks. He was not much interested in this and once
made a chop at one of the youngsters, cutting him in half.
For this his mate made a chop at him, and nearly cut off his side fin.
Then, finding that everything was not as pleasant as it had seemed, he
cruised away again to the southward.
One day he came to a queer thing floating upon the water. It was not
unlike a whale as viewed from underneath, but every now and then a
peculiar creature with arms and legs swaying wildly, dropped from it
and went to the bottom. Then, staying but a moment to collect some
shell-fish, it would rise again to the surface.
This interested him, and he lay by watching. Then, the smell of these
creatures being somewhat appetizing, he made a dash at one as he arose.
He came to the surface with the man in his jaws, and he saw the
whalelike object was full of similar animals. They shouted and made a
great noise when they saw their fellow chopped in halves and carried
away by him.
Now the taste of this peculiar creature was very good--much better, in
fact, than the fish he had been eating. For a long time after his meal
he waited a few fathoms below the surface, hoping another would descend.
Finally, he noticed a long line trailing away from the floating thing
above. He watched it and smelled it, and found there was something
tied to the end. He was a little afraid that there was something wrong
with that line and a sudden fear came upon him. He hesitated. Then his
old careless spirit came back, and he nosed the bait, finding it some
kind of flesh he had never tasted before. He pushed it about while the
instinctive fear of the peculiar smell held him. Then he made a chop
and bolted the lump.
The line, however, would not cut. He chopped and chopped, again and
again, backing away, but to no purpose.
Suddenly the line became taut. A sharp pain struck him in the throat,
and he knew he was fast to the line by some sharp thing in the flesh he
had bolted.
He became panic-stricken and fled away. But no sooner would he forge
ahead a few fathoms than that line would draw so tight the pain was
unbearable. He would be slowly and surely pulled back again.
This lasted for some minutes, and then his old spirit of apathy came
upon him, and he allowed the line drag him where it chose, while he
held it like a vice in his jaws.
Soon he found himself at the surface, and the strange creatures like
the one he had eaten made a great noise. There were several flashes
like lightning, only not so bright, and with the noise like thunder he
felt heavy blows upon his head. He made a desperate dash away, and tore
the line slack for many fathoms, but the pain in his throat stopped him
from going farther. Then he was lifted slowly back to the surface again.
There he lay a huge, dark shadow under the clear water. He was growing
faint and dizzy from the blows upon his head, and the last he saw of
the bright sunlight was the blue water foaming about him, and a row of
eyes looking over the edge of the floating thing.
They passed a bowline over his tail and hitched the throat-halliard
block to it. Then they hoisted him tail first into the air, and cut
the hook from his mouth. A diver cut off his tail and hung it on the
jib-boom end for luck. Later they cut him adrift and he sank slowly
down to the white coral below, lying there upon his side, a grisly
sight. The shadow above disappeared, and then the scavengers of the
reef came creeping up to do their work.
[Illustration: A TRAGEDY OF THE SOUTH ATLANTIC]
The whaling schooner _Erin_ was a modern vessel. She had a little of
the “old greaser” about her. She had been built and fitted out at New
Bedford, Mass., the mother-port of nearly all good whaling craft, and
she was manned by men who had served their time in whaling ships.
Her tonnage was not over three hundred, but she was so strongly put
together that she looked somewhat heavier than she really was. Her
bow was like that of a clipper, and her stern had the modern overhang
of a cruising yacht, but her beam was great and her top-sides bulky,
showing a tumble-home like that of the ancient frigates. Therefore,
she was not considered fast. Her spars were short and stumpy, and she
had no foreboom, owing to chunky smokestack that arose from her main
deck, over which the foresail passed. She was flushed fore and aft,
save for a heavy-built superstructure over her engines, through which
the smokestack protruded, and it was evident that she could stand a
great amount of rough usage. Being built for southern whaling in the
vicinity of Cape Horn, she needed all the strength that could be put
into her, and Captain Jackson, her commander, always kept her down to a
draught of fifteen feet, even when running light, to enable her to hold
up to the tremendous rolling seas off the Cape. Forward, she carried
a peculiar sort of cannon on her forecastle, which fired an exploding
harpoon weighing a hundred pounds, heavy enough to put a quietus upon
any ordinary member of the whale family. Her boats and other gear
were of the usual type; but, as she was not to carry oil, either in
bulk or casks, her deck was devoid of the ordinary furnace of the
sperm-whaler, and her hold of the odor which comes from the usual mass
of rancid blubber when packed for a long voyage from the Arctic Ocean,
in vessels hunting the right whale. She was, in fact, a stanch, trim
little vessel. Her crew of thirty men had been selected and shipped,
and Captain Jackson cleared for his last cruise.
When well off shore, the boiler was cooled and sails set, for there
must be no waste of coal, and the _Erin_ stood to the southward on her
long run to the Falkland Islands, where she would begin her hunt for
the giants of the southern ocean.
The run south was made without any unusual experience. On the
sixty-first day out she raised the huge mountains of Patagonia to the
westward, and, shortening sail so as to drift not over four knots
an hour, she hauled on the wind and stood through the “black water”
between the Falk Islands and Staten Land.
In December and January, the Antarctic summer months, the air is quite
cold as far north as the fiftieth parallel. The “blow” of a whale
stands out sharply against the sky as the warm air in the animal’s
lungs turns into vapor, giving the hunter a chance to see it at a
distance of several miles. Objects seem to lift from off the horizon as
in a mirage, only they are not inverted.
Here, in the summer season, the great rorqual, or finback whale,
disports himself in ease and security, for, until lately, he has had
few known enemies, and has been unmolested by man. Dozens of these
great creatures often follow a huge bull leader, and they jump and
plunge about as lively as they would if their weight were reckoned in
pounds instead of tons.
The huge, timid creature who led a school under the shadow of Tierra
del Fuego, that season, was a giant of his kind. One hundred feet of
solid bulk was between the tips of his tremendous flukes and the end
of his hideous head. A hundred tons of bone and sinew, covered with a
coating of thin blubber, to keep out the cold of the icy seas.
His head was ugly and flat-looking, and his mouth a hideous cavern,
full of slabs of whalebone, from which depended masses of horrible
hair to act as a sieve for the whale-food poured down his gullet. His
back slanted away to a place amidships, where a lumpy knob rose, as if
he were a hunchback, and from there aft he sloped in long and sinuous
lines to the spread of his tail or flukes, which were fully two fathoms
across. The blades of the _Erin’s_ wheel were not nearly so large or
so powerful as the blades of bone and cartilage that drove him ahead
through the yielding medium, or raised the tons of flesh and blood to
a height that showed a full fathom or more of clear sky under his thin
belly when he breached. He was a giant, a descendant from prehistoric
ages when monsters of his kind were more common than they are to-day.
It is doubtful if ever anything existed in flesh or blood of greater
size.
How old the giant was no one could learn. His age could hardly have
been less than two centuries, for whales grow slowly. They are like
other warm-blooded animals, and it takes many years to build up a mass
of a hundred tons of flesh fiber. He was known to Captain Jackson,
who had seen him on former voyages, but as yet he had not made his
acquaintance; for, in spite of the old whale’s size and age, he was
very timid. He would rush from a pair of fierce “killers,”--the dreaded
sharks who attack toothless whales,--and only his tremendous size and
activity would prevent them from following him. Consequently, whenever
Jackson lowered his small boats, with the intention of making him a
visit, the old fellow would wait only long enough to allow the boats
to approach within fifty fathoms of him. Then he would begin to edge
away, and, before the whale-gun could be brought to bear, he would be
in full flight to windward, his flock or school following in his wake.
Many were the maledictions cast upon him by the whalemen, whose tired
muscles bore witness to his speed, and, finally, he was left alone to
roam at will in the “black water.” Where he went to, at the beginning
of winter, it was impossible to tell, but, at the first easterly blow,
he would disappear, bound for other parts, leaving nothing behind but a
crew of angry sailors, and taking with him the memory of an undisturbed
old age.
On that December morning, when Captain Jackson hauled on the wind and
stood offshore, the sun shone brilliantly. The wind was light and
from the southwest, and objects stood up plainly from the sea. The
lookout at the masthead had just been relieved, when the time-worn cry
of “blo-o-ow” reached the deck. Away to the southward rose the jets,
looking almost as high as water spouts, as the warm vapor condensed in
the cool air. It was a large school, or, more properly speaking, herd,
for a finback is no more a fish than is a cow. Jackson came on deck and
watched the blows, counting them over and over to get the exact number
of his game. Whalebone at so much a ton was within easy distance,
and it looked as if a few thousand dollars’ worth of the substance
would find its way below hatches by dinner time. The forward gun was
overhauled and the line and harpoon cleared, the latter being charged
with a heavy load of powder. The explosion would open the huge barbs
of the harpoon and drive them deeper into the monster, expanding in
his flesh, making it absolutely impossible to withdraw them by pulling
on the line. They would not hunt him after the manner of the tame and
harmless sperm whale, that can be killed with about as much ease as a
cow in a pasture, in spite of all the sailors’ yarns to the contrary.
The whales paid no attention whatever to the schooner. They played a
quiet, frolicsome game, breaching and sounding, and coming often to
the surface to breathe. There were some young ones among them, and the
huge leader, the giant bull, seemed to take a special pride in one
whose antics were more pronounced than the rest. He would come near
it and seem almost to touch it gently with his side flipper, and the
little fellow would make a breach clear out of the water, apparently
with pure joy at the notice bestowed. Then he would come alongside the
big fellow and snuggle up to him in a most affectionate manner, and
the giant would roll toward him and put out his great arm or flipper,
as if to bestow a caress. He was a very affectionate old fellow, and,
as the vessel drew nearer, his size and actions were remarked by the
mate, who called the skipper’s attention to them. Just then the great
whale breached, and the sun, striking fairly upon his dark side,
showed several deep lines that looked like huge scars. His long, thin
shape and hideous head were plainly outlined against the sky, and, as
he struck, the sea resounded with the crash. He disappeared, and the
little fellow breached and followed him.
“That’s the big coward, the leader,” said Jackson. “You kin tell him by
them cuts he has in his sides, an’ there aint nothin’ bigger afloat. He
is an old one and wary. You wouldn’t think a whale with them scars on
him would be scared at a little boat, hey? Them was cut a long time
ago, mebbe, but they were done in a fight sech as ye’ve never seen.”
“Mebbe he got licked?” suggested the mate.
“He wouldn’t be here if he had,” said Jackson. “Howsomever, here he is,
and it’s our business to get him and cut him up, if we kin.”
To stop the leader of the whales was the object, for, if he was
held, the rest would either scatter or await developments. In either
case they would not get very far away, and could be reckoned with
afterwards. The _Erin_ was held pointed toward the spot where the whale
was expected to rise, and the mate went forward and stood behind the
gun with the harpoon loaded in it, and ready for a shot as soon as he
should come within twenty fathoms. The old coward, however, had seen
the approaching ship, and, with a peculiar movement of his flukes upon
the water, he gave the signal for danger.
Somewhere in that oily brain the memory of his past life was stored
in a strangely simple but vivid manner. He remembered, although he
was unable to reason it all out like the human being who hunted him;
but, a thousand moons before, he had gone forth in the ocean from his
birthplace in the South Pacific, and had held his way proudly and with
force. Fiercely he had fought for everything he took of the world’s
belongings, and the joy of battle had run warm in his blood. It had
surged through his great frame at the sight of a stranger, and he had
striven and conquered all who had opposed him or refused to do his
will. Many had died, for a sea fight is usually to the death, and the
strangeness of the passion had gradually worked its way into the old
mind, and he held aloof. The experience of a hundred years taught him
something. The oily brain learned slowly. The instinct, or feeling, had
gradually come upon him that to fight is a great waste of energy, for
life was more pleasant in the companionship of his many wives and young
ones, and continual strife was not the right thing. To avoid it, if
possible, was the thought uppermost in his old head; so, when he saw
the approaching schooner, he gave a warning stroke upon the sea.
Instantly all the whales sounded.
But Captain Jackson was an old whaleman. He was after whales, and he
had come thousands of miles to hunt them. The animals must come up
again, soon, and to be near the spot where they would reappear would
probably mean a capture. With a keen sense of reasoning, the bull knew
that bodies that travel through the air must necessarily be retarded
by the wind. Therefore, to windward he led the herd, and Jackson did
not underestimate his cunning. With fires started under the boiler, the
_Erin_ held her way straight into the eye of the breeze, and the mate
leaned over the forecastle rail, gun-lanyard in hand, peering into the
clear depths for the dark shadow below that would show the presence
of a rising monster. Jackson stood at the wheel with the signal pull
in his hand, waiting to “shake her up” at the first sign of the game.
The wheel turned slowly below, and the slight jar of machinery
vibrating the hull was the only sound save the stirred water abaft the
rudder from the thrust of the screw, gurgling and murmuring in a soft
undertone.
The whalemen were gathered about the forecastle head, or stood near
the boat falls, ready to lower away at a signal, and secure their
victim. The sun shone strongly, and objects were visible at a great
depth below the surface of the sea. Ten minutes passed, and Jackson
was getting nervous. He had tried to gauge the rapidity of the old
bull’s headway through the water, and had figured that he would come up
somewhere in the vicinity of the vessel on her course. But not a sign
of a whale had shown, and ten minutes had passed. They must be badly
gallied, indeed, to stay under much longer. The old bull was cunning;
but he, Jackson, knew a thing or two. It was pitting the old brain of
an animal with a century or two of experience against that of an old
man with keen intelligence. The skipper felt confident. He would take
a long shot at the big fellow, and, once fast to him, whalebone would
be plentiful for a few days. While the mate was leaning over the rail
forward, looking down into the depths, he noticed a sudden darkening of
the water just ahead of the vessel. He sprang to the cannon and stood
ready to fire. The great shadow rose toward the surface, and the men
saw instantly that it was a huge whale. Jackson was right, to a hair.
The great bull was coming up under the jib-boom end. A man raised his
hand aloft and gave a low cry, while the rest stood back from the gun
to escape the shock of the heavy discharge and powder-blast. Jackson
rushed to the rail and leaned over.
But the great shadow did not materialize into anything more. It
remained deep down beneath the surface, fully twenty feet below, and,
as the schooner forged ahead, it drifted alongside, a few fathoms
distant. The signal was made to stop the engines, and both the schooner
and the whale lay quietly drifting, the animal deep down and perfectly
safe from a shot.
“It’s the coward, all right,” said Jackson, coming to the mate’s side;
“that big coward bull what won’t show up for nothin’. I never seen sech
a scary whale. Look at him--sink me, jest look at him! Blamed if he
didn’t wink at me. Will ye look at that eye?”