We reached the Gulf Stream some time during that night. I remember
that I was awakened before dawn by the heeling of the ship so that I
was all but pitched out of my bunk. I sat up and held on, and heard
the rain, and the sound of feet on deck, and orders shouted, and
the hoarse singsong of the crew as they manned the sheets and the
halliards and the braces, and the noise of the yards swinging, and
the sails slatting. There was no singsong from the men aloft taking
in sail. The ship was pitching and rolling badly. The old Clearchus
was good at that. Then Captain Nelson went on deck, and I dressed
hastily, and went out too into the pitchy blackness of a stormy night
at sea.
The two men at the wheel were having a hard time of it. I took my
stand by the weather corner of the after house, hugging it close,
to keep out of the rain, and looked out at the wet deck, which
gleamed faintly now and then, and at the shadowy forms of the men who
happened to pass near me, and at the white tops of the seas rolling
past. The foam seemed to shine with a light of its own. Then the
ship gave a more violent plunge than ever, and I could tell by the
sound that she had shipped a sea over the bows, although I could see
nothing; but as she rose I heard it come rushing aft, and the next
moment the water was swirling in the near scupper, and slopped up
against the leeward wall of the house. I stood there for some time,
until long after they had sail reduced to reefed topsails, and my
feelings were a curious mixture of exultation in the wildness of
the night and—I may as well confess it now, although nothing could
have drawn such a confession from me then—a sneaking fear that the
ship {43} would not stand such buffeting. I thought of home, and
knew very well that my mother was lying awake and listening to the
wind and the rain, and thinking of me. And I knew that I was in my
father’s thoughts too, although those thoughts could not keep him
awake. He knew that I was taking but the ordinary risks that every
rightly constituted boy has to take, and goes to meet gladly. Indeed
the risk was not great. It did not seem possible that I had left home
less than two days before, and that it was such a few miles behind
me. My thoughts being in that direction, I decided to keep a journal
of some sort, and send it home when a chance offered. The chance may
be a brief one, merely a passing ship, when there is no time to write
letters.
I suppose I must have made up my mind that if I was to be drowned
I should be drowned, and I might as well be comfortable about it,
for as it was beginning to be gray in the east, with the melancholy
waste of wild waters just visible, and that sinking of the soul which
always comes at such a time, I went below and turned in again and
went to sleep immediately.
The next day there was a stiff breeze from the southwest, which
continued for several days. If the Clearchus had been at all fast, or
even an average sailer, she would have made the Hatteras grounds in
a couple of days; but that was a big “if,” as my father would have
said with his quiet smile. Captain Nelson, knowing her well, made no
attempt to crowd her, but went on under easy sail, so that we were a
long time in getting to Hatteras. We got there toward the latter part
of an afternoon. Cape Hatteras, of course, was not in sight, nor even
the lightship on Diamond Shoals; but there was one vessel in sight.
I tried to make myself believe that I knew it for the Desdemona or
the Palmetto, but Captain Nelson said that neither of those ships was
there. However, he announced his intention of going aboard of her,
and said he would take me if I wanted to go. {44}
I was delighted, and regarded it as a mark of special favor. It was.
Captain Nelson was continually showing me those marks of favor,
although if I had not behaved myself he would have stopped very soon.
But I cannot remember that it ever occurred to me to do otherwise,
and if I failed in any respect it was not by intention. Captain
Nelson was very easy on those of good intentions, if they were not
fools, and inclined to be indulgent toward harmless mischief, but
very hard on malice or slacking, and showed them no mercy. Like many
another man of action and results he had little patience with a fool.
I think he blamed himself for this, and regarded it as a weakness,
although he never said anything to me about it. I sympathize with
him. All my life I have never been able to abide a fool, and
there are many kinds; and I have been aware that it is a fault of
character, and that I should have patience with them, for they cannot
help their condition. But I have never been without faults, thank
God, although I suppose that I was a good boy, on the whole. And I
suppose that I should be ashamed of that, too, but I am not, and I
never was. I do not believe that I ever thought about it.
Captain Nelson was going over for a “gam.” Now a gam is nothing more
nor less than a gossip: each gives the other what news he has, the
gossip of home from the outbound captain, and from the inbound the
gossip of whales and their ways, and news of whalers and captains
that he has met, the number of barrels of oil that the George and
Susan has taken, the accident to the Addison, the men that the
Gosnold lost by a fighting whale on the Carroll grounds, and any
other items of interest that he can remember. The two captains,
before they get through, may be telling anecdotes of other whalemen
or of whales, or they may be talking of home or of Nantucket and
Old Ma’am Hackett’s garden. They may have something hot and glasses
between them, and the gam may last an hour {45} or three hours or
all day. It all depends upon the men. Two captains have been known to
spend all day gamming, and to turn up again in the morning for more
of it, but such an abuse of the practice is very rare. The gam has
its useful purpose as well as its pleasant one—although any pleasant
purpose is useful. The outbound captain gets the most out of it, the
news of ships and of men, but most of all, the news of whales, and
how they are running that season, and where they are to be met in
plenty; much more recent news than he had when he sailed. But any
really vital news likely to be of benefit to himself—a new whaling
ground discovered, for instance, hitherto unknown, in which whales
are plentiful—he carefully keeps to himself. The crew are not so
careful, although many of them are close-mouthed.
The vessel had been cutting in, as Captain Nelson could tell without
his glass, and as Peter Bottom and every other old hand could tell.
I could not see what they were doing, and I have no reason to think
that any of the green hands could. She was more than three miles
away, and there was a light bluish haze which made it difficult
to see clearly, but I got a pair of battered field glasses from
the rack, and managed to make out dimly the outline of some sort
of a flimsy structure on her side, the crew all crowded up by the
windlass, and something bulky being hoisted in over the gangway.
Captain Nelson had given me the use of those old field glasses, as
nobody else wanted them. I would have carried them about with me, for
I felt very proud and important at having glasses of my own; but it
would have taken a dray or an ice wagon at least to carry them.
A boat was lowered, Peter Bottom being in the crew of the boat, and
set off with the captain standing just in front of the steersman,
his head in constant danger from the handle of the long steering
oar, and his stomach from the shaft of the stern oar as it swung.
He had to stand, for {46} there was no seat for him. Whaleboats
are not designed for carrying passengers. But he kept his feet and
his dignity at the same time, and I felt a great admiration for
the way in which he did both. I was perched up in the bow, in the
harpooner’s place, and found the thigh-hole in the clumsy cleat a
great convenience in keeping my own balance and dignity. Then I gazed
ahead over the little sunken deck—the “box”—with its length of whale
line ready coiled upon it, and imagined myself striking a whale;
and I raised my arms in the attitude of a harpooner darting the
harpoon, and I hurled the imaginary weapon with tremendous force—all
imaginary, of course—and it sunk to the haft in the great body;
and I heard a snicker, and looked around, and there was one of the
mates—I think it must have been Mr. Wallet, although it was not his
boat—grinning at me from his place at the steering oar, and Captain
Nelson was smiling. I had already developed a cordial detestation of
Mr. Wallet. I remember to this day how red and uncomfortable I got,
even to the back of my neck. But I turned about at once, and stood as
stiff as a ramrod with the help of the thigh-hole, and I looked ahead
and I saw a great volume of black smoke rising from the try-works.
Astern of her there was something in the water, with an immense
flock of screaming gulls continually rising and settling again like
a fountain. It looked much like the sight I have often seen up to a
few years ago, off T wharf in Boston, the fishermen packed three deep
about the wharf and all the men busy either unloading and weighing
their fares of fish, or baiting trawls, and patches of scraps and
gurry on the water, and crowds of great gray or black-and-white
herring gulls screaming and dipping and elbowing for their share of
the vile stuff.
We were getting near enough for me to see things clearly. The
vessel’s starboard side was toward us, and there hung the
cutting-stage by the gangway. Strangely {47} enough, perhaps, I had
never before seen a cutting-stage. When a ship is in port they are
not in evidence, and we had had no occasion yet to rig ours. It is a
simple affair of three planks, the two shorter ones butted against
the side of the ship and resting on the wales. The two short planks
keep the outer plank, which is longer, at the proper distance from
the side. The planks are bolted together at the outer corners, and
are held up by ropes running from the outer corners to the main
rigging at one end, and at the other to a post rising above the rail
of the ship. Most of the work is done from the long outer plank,
which has bolted on its inner edge posts of iron supporting a light
railing. It is somewhat of a mystery why the men do not fall off of
those few inches of slippery, rocking plank, with nothing at their
backs but the wide ocean. They are supposed to have monkey-ropes
about their waists—usually forgotten—or a line at their backs along
the cutting-stage, and they have long, heavy spades in their hands,
which seem to anchor them. Sometimes they do fall off among the
sharks, but they rarely come to any harm. But at the time it looked
to me like a very insecure footing, and I was sure any house-painter
would have rejected it with scorn.
The ship turned out to be the Palm, of New Bedford, and the captain
was an old friend of Captain Nelson’s. The two stood apart, aft, for
some time, watching the busy men about the try-pots. The men were
stripped to the waist, most of them, and laughing and talking among
themselves like children. Some were passing pieces of blubber from
the hatch to the mincers; some were mincing the blubber on those
pieces with heavy knives much like a butcher’s cleaver with a handle
at each end; some were carrying the minced pieces to the try-pots;
and some were stirring the mess in the pots or feeding the fire, with
long, two-pronged iron forks in their hands. The black smoke billowed
up over their heads, and {48} copper gleamed red in the rays of the
low western sun, and the half-naked bodies wet with sweat gleamed
red, and there was a reddish tinge to the black smoke. It looked like
an orgy of devils about the pots, and when the men came out from
behind the try-works I almost expected to see their forked tails
hanging down, and cloven feet.
The two captains went into the cabin, and there was nothing for
the rest of us to do, for the crew of the Palm were too thoroughly
occupied to give us much of a welcome. Everything was covered with
oil and with huge pieces of what looked like butcher’s meat, besides
the blubber. Whale-meat is red, much the color of beef, only darker,
although it does not look like beef. We have recently been asked to
eat it, as if that were a new idea. And the newspapers have had their
short articles, or perhaps a column, carefully timed, telling us how
good it is, and that it is getting to be quite the fashion at New
York hotels, and that some firm in Oregon has been asked to put up a
million or two cans of it. I even saw some displayed in the window of
a fish market for two or three weeks; the same pieces, I judged, from
their continually ripening color. It did not seem to be in any great
demand. Whalemen have eaten whale-meat for a century or more. It is
the meat of the right whale that is eaten. Sperm whale meat is full
of oil and not edible. Once is usually enough for a man, a steak cut
from the small. Even right whale meat does not seem to be a favorite
article of diet, although porpoise steaks are good, and porpoises are
whales.
At the time I knew nothing of the palatability of whale-meat, and I
was interested only in the trying-out process. I stepped carelessly
nearer, and my foot slipped on the oily deck, and I should have
gone down if it had not been for a strong arm that caught me about
the body; and I found myself gazing into the smiling face of Peter
Bottom, and at an enormous raw and bloody jaw that was {49} just
behind him in the scuppers. It was more than fifteen feet long—the
jaw, not Peter’s face—and it was armed with backward curved teeth,
not close together, but spaced rather widely; several inches between
the teeth. They did not look so very formidable; not nearly so wicked
as a shark’s, and the whale’s upper jaw has no teeth. But whale’s
teeth were no new thing to me, although I had never seen a jaw
freshly cut off, with the ragged and bloody flesh on it.
“What are they going to do with it, Peter?” I asked, too much
interested in the jaw to thank him for catching me. “Will they try it
out? Is there oil in it?”
“Oil in what?” said Peter, looking about. “There ’s oil in near
everything around here. There ’d have been oil in your clothes and
in your hair if I had n’t been here to catch you. Oh, it ’s the jaw
you mean. There ’s no oil to speak of in it, but there ’s teeth. When
they get eased up on the oil, they ’ll pull the teeth with the help
of spades and a tackle. There ’s fine dentists among the crew, I ’m
thinking. And maybe they ’ll cut up the jawbone, for it ’s hard and
fine, and good for scrimshawing; anything that ’s too big for a tooth
to answer for. I ’ll show you, Timmie, when we get some whales of our
own.”
“What will you carve, Peter?”
“What will we carve? Anything you want, lad, from an ivory spoon or
a jagging-wheel, for your mother to mark pies with, to a model of
the Clearchus, exact in every line and rope, and all made of ivory
and silk. I brought me some silk thread for just that. Or we might
make a swift, to wind off the hanks of wool. One of the boatsteerers,
last voyage, made one. It was a strange thing, full of joints, and
could be pulled out large or pushed in small to fit, like a lazy
tongs. It seemed to work fine, but there was no real beauty in it,
just flat links and all; a very good machine, but no piece of work
for an artist to turn out. Still, it don’t need to be so plain. We
could carve {50} the links and the shaft and the pedestal with a
mermaid or two and some dolphins and old Nepchune and his car, and
tip off the links with a mermaid’s head at the top and her tail at
the bottom. Oh, yes, Timmie, it comes to me now that a real artist
might do something even with the reel. We ’ll make one if you like.
Or we might make you a cane to use when you get back from this voyage
a fine, big man, and go walking about the streets to turn the heads
of the girls. Oh, there ’s many a thing we can make, and—hello! Ahoy,
there!”
As Peter spoke I turned quickly toward the try-pots, for it was there
he was looking. The oil in one of the pots was being dipped out
into the copper cooling-tank, and the other pot was almost ready.
Something had happened to one of the men as he swung his dipper. The
dipper is practically a pail of copper held in an iron ring at the
end of an iron shaft about three feet long; and on the end of this
shaft is a long sapling handle. I did not know, at the time, what had
happened, but I found, afterwards, that the man had hit his elbow
and the contents of his dipper had been emptied into the second pot.
What I saw was a thin wreath of smoke rising from the pot, with a
tremendous bubbling and commotion in it, and instantly the oil burst
into flame, which licked the near-by woodwork and rigging, and sent
out a great volume of black smoke.
The orgy of devils about the pots became more of an orgy than ever,
although the devils no longer laughed. In the weird light and the
black smoke which, at times, rolled down and hid the whole thing from
me, the devils ran to and fro, and there was a confusion of shoutings
for perhaps a minute. Then I heard the mate’s voice bellowing orders,
and the other shouting grew less, but in place of it I heard the
grunting of men struggling with something heavy, or using every
muscle in pulling. The whole {51} thing seemed unreal to me, like
a sketch of Doré’s for a scene in Hell—although at that time I had
never heard of Doré—and I remember that I leaned back against the
bulwarks and laughed to myself. Peter had left me, and I had moved
clear of the jaw of the whale, but it never occurred to me to do
anything to help. No doubt I should only have been cursed by the mate
and by everybody else, for I should not have had the least idea what
to do, and I did not even know the names of things. But it is nothing
to my credit that I did not offer my blundering help, for I simply
did not think of it.
At last the flame died away and there was but little smoke and that
of a sickly grayish tinge, as if it were the ghost of what it had
hoped to be. I saw the two captains standing together, aft, watching
silently, and Peter joined me again, very black and dirty.
“A narrow squeak, Timmie,” he said. “I thought the ship would catch
afire in spite of us.”
“What was the matter, Peter?” I asked. “What did it?”
He turned to me with his humorous smile. Peter Bottom always had an
air of detachment in his way of looking at things which sometimes
concerned him very nearly.
“Does your mother never fry doughnuts,” he said, “in deep fat?”
I nodded—and I had a sudden lump in my throat. My mother did that,
and often; and her doughnuts were—but it was not of doughnuts I was
thinking.
“Well,” Peter went on, “your mother would not have asked me that
question. Does the fat never catch afire?”
I shook my head. “It never does when mother fries them. I tried it
once, and it did. Was that the reason?”
“Just that,” he said. And then our boat was ordered away, and Peter
ran.
The red sun was resting on the rim of the sea as we {52} started
back. From my place in the bow I watched it, and I lost myself. Our
course was directly in the golden track that led to the sun, and
whales and the black smoke of blubber and oily decks had no place in
my thoughts as I saw the sun sink into the sea.
{53}