The first observation that the captain was able to take showed us
to be in latitude 27° N., which was much farther south than he had
any idea of. I was present when he worked out our position; I was
supposed to be having a lesson in navigation, but I had no notion
what he was doing, nor why. I remember that he could not believe
it, and thought that he must have made a mistake, but a second
observation confirmed the first, and I marked our position on the
chart. I knew enough for that. That made our course northeast.
Captain Nelson went on deck to give the new course, and left me alone
with Bowditch. I struggled along for a few minutes, but I might
as well have been blind for all the good I got out of the book. I
thought I might as well be out in the sunshine, so I put the book
under my arm, and went on deck.
Mr. Brown happened upon me as I sat on a coil of rope with the open
book on my knee. It is not likely that I was even trying to read,
but I was probably gazing out over the ocean, which I could just see
at every roll of the ship, or up at the sky. He stooped and saw what
I was at, and he smiled, and asked me how I was getting along. When
I confessed that I was not getting along at all, he offered to help
me, and I accepted gratefully. He could not help me then, for he was
on duty; but later on he gave me my first idea of trigonometry. That
was the beginning of my studies with Mr. Brown. He was an excellent
teacher, and I was anxious to learn, which makes all the difference
in the world.
It was four or five days later that we ran into the edge of the
Sargasso Sea. We should have been clear of it by good rights, but the
edge of the weed had been shifted {117} into what should have been
clear ocean, possibly by the very storm that we had come through. I
knew, of course, that it must be the Sargasso Sea. I had read about
it in my geography without much interest, and the teacher had not
seemed much more interested than I, or to know much more about it.
The idea that I had formed was of a close-packed mass of seaweed,
through which a ship could no more force her way than she could
through an enormous haystack. The real thing is very different. I
have never been any closer to the middle than I was that day in the
Clearchus, and so I do not know, from the evidence of my own senses,
how closely packed the weed may be; but it is not like a stack of hay
at all. It consists of separate plants, or pieces of a plant, not
above a foot across, every plant floating by itself. A ship would
probably have no great trouble in going through what looked like
a solid mass of floating weed, each separate plant giving to her
passage with but little more resistance than the water.
Peter got a bucketful of water, with a plant bearing its strange
freight of life: crabs, sea-horses, pipe-fish, shrimp, and slugs.
“Aye, Timmie,” he said as he dropped the bucket over the side, “it ’s
sargasso, and that means seaweed in some outlandish lingo. Why they
can’t say seaweed when they mean seaweed is beyond me. I ’ve seen it
many a time.”
That bucket of water led to a fresh dislike of Mr. Wallet. I had
made a hasty examination of it while all hands gathered around me.
As soon as I could I grabbed up the bucket and ran aft with it, the
water slopping over my legs as I ran. I wanted to study those strange
beings at my leisure.
Suddenly remembering duties which, as was quite customary with me,
I had forgotten in my interest in other things, I left my precious
bucket at the head of the cabin steps, and dashed down to attend to
them before {118} anybody found out. The cabin stairs were very
steep and narrow, and I ran plump into Mr. Wallet—actually collided
with him, and bounced off, eliciting a grunt and a curse. I picked
myself up, and he paid no more attention to me, but went on up; and I
heard him stumble at the top, and curse again, violently. I chuckled,
and thought no more about it; but when I went for my bucket again, I
could not find it. Mr. Wallet, coming up, had stumbled over it, and
had been angry, and forthwith had emptied it over the side. I would
have done him an injury if I could, and I hoped he might run foul of
a fighting bull whale. That was the worst thing I could think of.
I was so provoked with Mr. Wallet about the loss of that bucket of
water that I pretended not to hear him when he spoke to me as I ran
to the forecastle to find Peter. He was most probably only going to
give me a reprimand—which I deserved—for leaving the bucket where
I did, and when I seemed not to hear him, he did not follow me up.
As I ran forward I looked over the expanse of water which glittered
in the sun under the brisk southerly breeze, but I saw no patches
of weed. As it turned out I did not get another bucket of weed with
its strange freight of life, for we had run clear of it. Never in my
life have I been able to get another head of sargasso-weed. That was
another grudge I bore Mr. Wallet, and still bear him. His feelings
toward me were none too friendly.
I plunged below to find Peter Bottom and pour out my grievances. I
found him busy, but he stopped his work—I did not even glance at
it—and covered it with his hand, and listened until I had emptied my
heart. When at last I had come to a hesitating stop he looked up with
a twinkle in his eyes.
“Now you ’ve got it all out, Timmie,” he said, “you feel better,
I ’ll warrant.”
I did feel better, and not so angry as I had been. But {119} that
means nothing. I have always been like that, with a hot heart that
cools rapidly, leaving hardly enough resentment for self-respect. I
knew it even then for a fault. I hold that anything that is worth
such hot anger as I felt demands the keeping of a cold resentment
long enough to do some good. A man of any stability would do that, or
he would not get so angry. Captain Nelson was a man of stability, and
I was already beginning to think Mr. Brown even more so. Mr. Baker
was an ignorant man, except in one line, and he was hot-tempered
and hard; Mr. Tilton was even more ignorant, although even-tempered
enough, quick in decision in matters which he knew about, and
vigorous in action; but both Mr. Baker and Mr. Tilton were men of
stability. Mr. Snow was regarded as a little busybody; but nowhere
was there a good word for Mr. Wallet. His ignorance was stupendous,
his talent for failure was great, no dependence could be placed on
him in any kind of a pinch, and he had not the courage of a sheep. It
was more or less of a mystery how he got his second mate’s berth, and
a still greater mystery how he held it.
“That second mate ’s not worth getting mad at,” Peter said, “and
he ’ll get his deserts sooner or later. They ’most always do. Now
look. I told you I had something to show you, and here it is.”
With that he lifted his hand from the small thing it covered, which
was of ivory, one of the larger teeth of our only whale. This thing
of Peter’s was already plainly a model of the hull of the Clearchus,
although there had not been time to do more than roughly shape it.
Even with the largest tooth used for it, the model was on a very
small scale, only about five and a half inches long.
I forgot entirely my grievance against the second mate, and could
only look at it longingly, as a dog eyes a bone, licking my chops.
Peter laughed to see me. “Do you know what it is to be, then?” {120}
“Anybody would know that. It will be beautiful, Peter. Do—do you
suppose I ’ll ever be able to do anything like that?”
“You ’re able to do something like that now. It ’s nothing now, but
you wait till I have it farther along. I have to shape it a bit more
to make it a true copy—and it ’s going to be a true copy, Timmie—and
then I ’ll cut the deck down to show the rail. Every plank, chain
plate, and bolt that shows on the outside of the ship is going to
show on this model. Then I have to build the deckhouses out of plates
of ivory scraped thin, and build the try-works, and step ivory masts,
and rig her with ivory spars and ivory sails scraped thin as paper.
And there ’s to be ivory blocks, and the rigging ’s to be silk
thread. It ’ll be quite proper, and scraped and polished till it
shines. I have it in my mind, and it grows as I get on. Aye, it ’ll
be quite proper.”
It was quite proper. As I raise my eyes to the mantel, there sits the
dainty model now. Much of the rigging of silk thread is rotten and
brittle, and breaks at a touch; but the rest of Peter’s handiwork
is of more enduring stuff, although yellow with age. It makes me
positively homesick to see the very decks that I trod, the wheel
under its roof and the rail at the stern upon which I had leaned so
many times, looking over the sluggish wake, the gangway with the
cutting-stage in place, the great blocks of the cutting-tackles, the
try-works with the bench against its after side; every detail of the
ship and its fittings reproduced, even to the boats lashed to their
stiff davits, the cranes swung out for them to rest upon, and little
harpoons and lances and spades in place. The paper-thin, translucent
ivory sails still hang from their ivory yards and belly with the
breeze. It makes me homesick, I say, and makes that time—it was a
happy time, on the whole—it makes that time even more real than does
my journal, which lies before me. At the time when I first {121} saw
that model, however, rough as it then was, I could only gape and
smile, and I said nothing coherent, I think.
The teeth that were used for scrimshawing—and for many other
purposes, for on some of the islands of the South Seas whales’ teeth
had a high value—the teeth were salvaged by the crew after the
cutting-in and trying-out were over. I have described the cutting off
of the lower jaw, and getting it on deck, where it was put at one
side, out of the way, until the more serious business of trying-out
the oil and getting it below decks was over. One jaw is much like
another; that is, unless it happens to be deformed, and deformed jaws
are more frequently seen than one would believe. We got two, and one
of them was so badly deformed that the tip of the jaw was curled
tightly around twice, making a tight spiral. It has always been a
mystery to me how a whale could get a living with a jaw like that,
but they seem to have no difficulty in doing so. Both of our whales
with freak jaws were in excellent condition. Deformation of the jaws
is supposed to be due to the whales’ fighting among themselves. I
know of no first-hand information on that point, but the bull whales
certainly fight viciously on occasion. A deformed jaw, however, is
usually cleaned and kept for museum purposes.
Extracting the teeth is generally an occasion for hilarity among the
crew. You will see the hinge of the great jaw at the yardarm, and a
giggling, shouting mob, armed with spades and saws, about its lower
end, which is on the deck. A whip tackle is also on the yard, its
lower end brought down to the deck. Then they fall to with their
spades, cutting the flesh away from the lower part of the tooth
and loosening it, and completing the extraction by main strength,
very much after the fashion of a dentist, but by means of the falls
instead of forceps. Often the loop slips off of the tooth suddenly,
letting down the men who are swaying away on the falls, {122} and
starting shouts of laughter. Or the whole strip of teeth may come
together, held together by the gums. When the teeth have all been
drawn the jaw is sawed into slabs for convenient use, for the jawbone
is very hard and close-grained.
I was to have a share of the teeth obtained in this way. Peter
must have known what I wanted, for he produced a slab sawed from a
tooth, and started me at once on an ivory spoon, on which I was busy
for several days, in my spare time, and in much time that was not
spare. Your whaleman gets so interested in his scrimshawing very
often, that he neglects his duties. I was no exception. The spoon
was intended for my mother. When that was done, I began an elaborate
pie-marker, a jagging-wheel, also intended for my mother, and changed
the destination of the spoon to my father. The pie-marker consisted
of a wheel, the edge of which was to be cut in very intricate
convolutions, turning in an ivory handle. I planned this handle in
the figure of a sperm whale holding the wheel between his jaws,
and I meant to carve him within an inch of his life. Peter did not
discourage me, probably thinking that my plan was as good as another
for giving me practice. I did carve him within an inch of his life,
or within rather less than that; but I was not satisfied with the
result, and tried to improve it, “improving” it several times, and
at last producing a very lean and skinny whale. I did not dare to
make further improvements, although the whale seemed very much out of
health. The carving of the wheel, too, left something to be desired,
and the convolutions were less intricate than I hoped for. Peter
comforted me somewhat with the observation that it would be easier to
clean, and that if I had made it as I had planned, it would have cut
out a great many little pieces of dough, which would infallibly have
got stuck in it, and which my mother would have had to pick out with
a sharp knife or a wire—or perhaps a hairpin. That was Peter’s little
joke, {123} not mine. My mother must have liked her pie-marker,
crude as it was, for she used it as long as she lived, and kept it
hanging from a hook in the edge of the kitchen shelf, within reach of
her hand. She never had to use a hair-pin on it.
[Illustration: HARPOONING PORPOISE]
We had unbroken good weather, with variable winds, mostly southerly
or easterly during the first part of the passage, and westerly and
northerly during the last part, but always of good strength. One
morning, I remember, there was a great school of porpoises playing
about the ship. They seemed even more antic than usual, leaping and
diving and playing tag, and otherwise showing their contempt for a
vessel which could not go any faster than the Clearchus.
Their cavortings were too much for Aziel Wright, George Hall, and
Miller, three of the boatsteerers. They easily got permission, and
Hall was first with a porpoise-iron, and was getting out on the
jibboom. Miller got down into the forechains, Wright staying on deck.
Hall and Miller got their porpoises, and then more, until there were
half a dozen thumping the deck. The whole crew had gathered, and the
men laid hold of the line when a porpoise was struck, and hauled him
on deck by main strength.
Then they killed them. It seemed to me a horrid job, but I watched
it, as boys will watch horrid jobs; in the same spirit which used to
prompt me to go occasionally to John Green’s slaughter-house, and
see steers felled with a sledge, and have their throats ripped up
with a sharp knife as you would rip up an old boot leg. They used to
kill sheep there in what seemed to me a particularly brutal manner,
and I have seen the men step up nonchalantly to a calf hung by its
bound hind legs, seize it by the nose, and cut its head off, without
a sound of remonstrance from the calf. These methods were quite usual
at the time. Boys are queer little savages. {124}
We had porpoise-steak for two or three days after that, and then
hash. Porpoise-steak tastes pretty good to a man who has been
nearly two months without fresh meat. A porpoise is really a small
whale, and is roughly about the size of a swordfish. There must be
comparatively few people who have not seen porpoises. The meat is
much like whale-meat, but more tender and better flavored.
A fine oil is extracted from the porpoise, the best coming from the
jaw. The porpoise jaw-oil is used for chronometers and watches. Mr.
Baker thought we might as well get everything the porpoises had to
give, and he had the blubber tried out, and the jaw-oil. There was a
small quantity of jaw-oil, to which we added later.
{125}