There was no unfavorable change in the weather, and we cruised
for three weeks without getting a whale, or even raising a spout.
One morning, however, after a rather thick haze had cleared away
somewhat, we found ourselves within half a mile of a pod of six or
seven, which were lying on the surface, spouting lazily. They did not
seem to be feeding, and I remember that I had heard a distant splash
while it was still too thick to see them, and Peter, to whom I had
turned inquiringly, had said that it was likely a whale breaching.
Almost everybody on board had heard it, and the lookouts were
doubled. They fully expected to sight whales, and they did sight them
from the masthead before we could see them from the deck. No cry was
given, but the men came down and reported.
There was hardly a breath of wind, and sound would carry easily in
that weather. Indeed, it was uncanny. There seemed to be streaks or
columns in the air which reflected the sound in the strangest ways,
or acted like a lens for sound, at one moment utterly cutting off
sounds that originated but a short distance away, and at the next
moment sending to us clearly faint noises made by the pod of whales
at a half-mile distance. Boats were lowered with the utmost care not
to make a noise, even being put into the water one end first, to
avoid any splash. The men were cautioned not to talk, and they sat
silent in their boats, cast off the falls quietly, and took to their
paddles as soon as the boats were in the water. It was of no use,
however. The whales were keeping tabs on us, and went down quietly
when a boat was within quarter of a mile of them, coming up half a
mile away. It was exasperating. There were whales almost at the side,
more than we had taken {174} in six months, and we could not get
near them; and after trying for hours, the boats were called back to
the ship.
I do not remember that I felt any disappointment, however. To tell
the truth, I was rather hoping for a pampero. It is not a fish, but
a wind. I had some vague recollection of the brief description in
Warren’s Physical Geography as a cold southwest wind which originates
in the Andes, and sweeps with great violence over the pampas of
Buenos Ayres, and is felt for some leagues at sea. My only comment
on this description is that I don’t believe it for a minute. We were
cruising just south of the latitude of Buenos Ayres, three or four
hundred miles from the coast. No wind whose origin is purely local,
in mountains even as high as the Andes, is at all likely to be of
the violence of the sample we had, after traversing the width of a
continent—narrow as it is at this latitude—and four hundred miles of
ocean. They must be fed from the pampas, be supplied with energy,
at least; and it seems much more reasonable to me to believe that
these winds originate over the pampas. They are of the nature of a
thunder-squall, and very probably of similar origin. But Warren can
hardly be considered a recent authority.
I had my wish gratified, and I shall never make another wish of that
kind. We were sailing along easily in a moderate northerly wind
about the middle of the afternoon when the Admiral’s cry came down
to us. There were two spouts to the eastward. I watched them rather
listlessly, for I had rather lost interest in spouts. An albatross or
a frigate bird would have roused much more interest. We were seeing
albatrosses occasionally, and one had followed the ship for two days,
picking up scraps from the galley, and finally following the carcass
of a whale when we cut it adrift. But the whole whale business had
become a matter of routine.
Three boats were called away, Mr. Baker’s, Mr. Brown’s, and Mr.
Macy’s. I had to move, for I was in the {175} way of one of
them; and I moved as little as possible, and gave them no further
attention. Then I heard Mr. Brown speaking to me.
“Here, Tim,” he said. “If you think you can pull one of these oars,
tumble in here, but be quick about it.”
Instantly I was all attention. I jumped for the boat, but stopped.
“The captain said,” I objected, “that I could n’t go until he—”
“Captain’s orders,” he interrupted sharply. “Go or not, but be quick
or the other boats ’ll get away first.”
I made no reply, but gave a little nervous laugh of delight, and
tumbled in. I did not know whether I could row one of the long, heavy
oars or not, but I could take two hands to it, and I had rowed all
my life in every kind of a boat, light and heavy. We took the water,
and cast off the falls, and shoved clear. Then we stepped the mast
and set the sail, and were off after my first whale. All the men were
kind and helpful, but the Prince took me especially under his wing,
and told me what my duties were in stepping the mast. When we were
under sail he gave me rapid instructions as to my duties in meeting
every emergency that ever arose in connection with the capture of a
whale. I could not remember a quarter of them. It was all I could do
to understand them.
Fortunately I did not have to remember. No emergency arose. We came
up with our whale without much pulling, the Prince planted both his
irons, and we backed off furiously. The whale stopped, astonished,
Mr. Baker came up on the other side, and Starbuck got an iron fast;
but not before the whale had recovered his power of motion, so that
Starbuck’s iron entered at the small, and not near the side fin,
where he had meant to place it. Mr. Baker’s boat was deluged with
water by a sweep of the flukes, and the whale was under way, head
out. Mr. Macy, I saw later, had struck the other whale, and was
having no trouble. {176}
Our whale had turned about to the eastward, and was running. We had
to give him line at first, and the whale line went twisting and
writhing out past me like a living snake, making a scraping, hissing
noise on my oar handle. I shrank away from it. Then, with another
turn around the loggerhead, it straightened and tautened, and did
not go so fast, but edged by me foot by foot; and the spray began to
rise in a miniature cascade on each side of the bow. Then another
turn around the loggerhead, and the progress of the line past me was
by inches, slower and slower, and I could hear it creaking. Then it
stopped, and we were fairly off on my first sleigh-ride behind a
whale. The Prince had gone aft and taken the steering oar, and Mr.
Brown had come forward.
The boats were going at a rate which seemed terrific, nine or ten
knots. Our boat rolled viciously in the cross-sea, and veered and
bucked. I could see the Prince putting all his strength and weight
on the long steering oar, first one way and then the other, to meet
her as she yawed, and keep her on a straight course. The cascades of
spray rose from her keel now, about a foot or two aft of the stem,
higher than the gunwale; and the northerly wind caught one of them,
and blew it inboard. I was drenched with it, and so was the man aft
of me. We seemed to leap from sea to sea. When I gathered courage
enough to look at Mr. Baker’s boat, I saw that that was a mistaken
impression; but I felt as if I were on a shingle swung skittering
along the top of the waves at the end of a pole.
Mr. Brown ordered us to heave in on the line. We strained our backs
to the last muscle, but could only gain a fraction of an inch. Mr.
Baker’s crew could do no better, and there was nothing for it but to
hang on and wait for the whale to tire and slacken speed. I looked
back—I continued to look back—and saw the Clearchus already hull
down. I could see no sign of Mr. Macy. I watched the ship until she
sank to her tops, then farther; {177} then I could no longer make
her out at all. And still that whale kept up his furious gait, head
out, as though he were bound to take us to the Cape of Good Hope or
to the Carroll grounds at least.
We must have been going on in that way for an hour and a half or
more before the whale showed any sign of weariness. It needed a man
of more experience than I had to tell the symptoms, or to perceive
that our speed was slackening. Mr. Baker’s boat was just about abeam
of ours, and a couple of oars’ lengths away. He had dropped back
a boat’s length or so to avoid fouling us, but the two boats were
within easy speaking distance, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown looked at
each other, and spoke at the same instant.
“Heave?”
Then they both nodded, and we got the order. We heaved, and gained a
couple of inches; heaved again, and six inches of line came in. Mr.
Brown was not a yelling mate. He spoke only loud enough for us to
hear.
Mr. Baker was an accomplished swearer, a linguist of parts. I did
not know there was such a variety of oaths in the language until I
heard him swearing at his crew, urging them to heave, and calling
them more vile names than you would think any men would be willing to
hear quietly. Swearing was very general on the Clearchus, and none
of Mr. Baker’s language was to be taken seriously, which, of course,
the men knew. I do not know what it is about the sea that prompts men
to swear, but there must be something. Most of them get so that they
cannot make the simplest remark without an oath. I was getting into
the habit myself, although I had never been accustomed to using such
language or to hearing it. Before I left home I had tried once or
twice saying “Damn!” with inward quakings, and half expecting to see
the heavens fall; now I said “Damn!” and other things quite fluently,
without quakings of any kind, and before I got home I {178} was a
confirmed swearer. It is a bad habit, and weakens what is said rather
than strengthening it. When I realized this I broke myself of the
habit. Mr. Brown was no swearer, nor was Mr. Macy, nor Peter Bottom,
nor the Prince, all of whom I admired, each according to his fashion.
With all Mr. Baker’s flow of language, his crew did not gain an inch
more than we did; but the heaving must have had its effect on the
whale. There was still a good deal of line out, perhaps fifteen or
twenty fathoms, when he seemed to stop suddenly. There was a general
cry of “Flukes!” and his flukes went into the air, and he sounded.
When Starbuck had struck, as I have said, he was a trifle late. He
succeeded in getting one iron fast—in the small—but had to heave the
other overboard. This second harpoon had been skittering over the
waves ever since, here and there, according to its whim. It had not
touched our line, although Mr. Brown had been afraid that it would;
and it might easily have touched our line, for a whale swims low in
the water, and there is seldom any part of him continually visible
aft of his hump, so that there is nothing in the way. But the harpoon
had touched Mr. Baker’s line several times—a good many times; each
touch lasting but an instant, like the bite of a shark. A harpoon is
even sharper than a shark’s tooth, and each touch had severed some
of the tough strands. It was a wonder that the line had survived the
heaving. It must have only just survived. When the whale sounded, Mr.
Baker did not give him line, but was holding until last second. This
may have been the proverbial last straw, or it may have been simply
that the time had come for the line to part. At any rate, it parted.
Mr. Baker cursed fluently in a really heartfelt way, and the line was
rapidly hauled in. The last fathom of it was a mere feather of manila.
This left us alone fast to the whale. He did not go {179} deep,
however, and Mr. Baker was waiting, near us, for him to come up,
which he did in about five minutes a few feet ahead of Mr. Baker’s
boat. He came up almost vertically, his head and body shooting out
of the water, and exposing his side fin. Then he fell over with a
tremendous splash; but Mr. Baker had shot his lance into him, and
quickly withdrawn it. The shank was bent, but Mr. Baker straightened
it by knocking on the gunwale, and let him have it again.
Meanwhile we had been taking in our slack line as fast as we could,
and when it tautened, heaving in on it to bring us up close enough
for Mr. Brown to use his lance. We had not been able to keep the
slack ahead of the whale, with all our haste, and he had got a turn
around his flukes, like a half hitch, so that we could not shake it
loose. It was impossible for us to haul in ahead of his flukes, and
lancing them would be no more than an annoyance to the whale, like
a mosquito bite. If he should take it into his head to slap that
mosquito, it might prove more than an annoyance for us. There was
nothing to be done but to slack off the line and try to row up to his
side fin, where Mr. Brown wanted to be. We could not have hoped to do
this if the whale’s attention had not been taken up with Mr. Baker’s
boat. He seemed to attribute all his troubles to that boat, and was
putting up a half-hearted sort of a fight; but even a half-hearted
fight by a fairly husky whale is not to be taken lightly. Mr. Baker
was having his hands full.
We pulled up to within a boat’s length, lay there for a few minutes
watching for an opening; then, putting all our strength into our
oars, we drove the boat in close to the side fin. Mr. Brown plunged
the lance in deep, and began churning it slowly up and down, feeling
for the heart or the great reservoir of arterial blood near it. The
whale had lobtailed once upon feeling the lance, without doing any
damage; but in a few strokes Mr. {180} Brown’s lance had found the
life. A tremor passed through the great body, a spout rose slowly
from his spiracle black with clotted blood, he bestirred himself, and
we backed off hastily. He was going into his flurry.
That flurry was not an elevating spectacle, but we all watched it. I
was fascinated, and so the others seemed to be, all in Mr. Baker’s
boat as well as in ours. Our attention for a long time had been so
entirely taken up by the whale that not a man of the twelve—counting
myself as a man—had looked about him, or been aware of anything but
the whale and the two boats, and what was happening there. Suddenly
Mr. Baker broke out in a perfect stream of curses. Mr. Brown smiled.
“Look!” he said. “Like a bad penny.”
We all looked where he pointed. There was the Annie Battles, not a
mile away, bearing down directly upon us. Not one of us said a word,
but two or three were grinning. It was beginning to seem funny.
Mr. Baker did not seem to think it funny. He had stopped his flow of
profanity, whether because he had exhausted his stock, or because his
choicest gems were inadequate, I could not guess; and now, standing
in his place in the bow like a gaunt statue of a man, silent and
motionless, he watched the Battles grow rapidly, and the foam under
her forefoot, and the men upon her deck. He held his lance loosely in
his hand, the shank resting on the gunwale. If she had shown any sign
of changing her course, I knew that he would have ordered his crew to
pull hard for her, in the hope of boarding her before she got away.
She did not; and there is no sense in hard pulling to meet a vessel
which is coming to meet you as straight and as fast as she can. And,
although Mr. Baker was holding his lance loosely, I knew that his
great fist would grip it hard at the slightest provocation.
At last the Battles put her helm down, slacked off her sheets, backed
one topsail, and hung there, almost near {181} enough for us to
heave a line aboard of her. No one on her hailed us, but some of her
men were standing at the rail like wooden images, watching us, while
others were going lazily aloft. By this time our whale had spouted
his last spout, and lay quiet in the sea, with our irons still in
him and our line fast to them. Mr. Baker’s men had their oars in the
water, and his boat seemed to be drifting toward the Battles. I saw
Mr. Wallet and another standing by the man at the wheel. I could see
even his feeble smile and his pale blue eyes and his tight curling
hair, almost like a negro’s but for the color. Mr. Wallet’s was
sandy, with a reddish tinge, like brown sandstone; some of our men
had called his hair his brownstone front. When he saw Mr. Baker’s
boat drifting toward them, he moved uneasily, his smile faded, and he
spoke to the man standing with him. He knew Mr. Baker of old.
Mr. Baker did not wait to get there. “If you try to steal _this_
whale,” he shouted, “why, damn your souls, there ’ll be blood
spilled.”
The man to whom Mr. Wallet had spoken was leaning on the rail. He
laughed. “There ’s been blood spilled already, ain’t there? Seems to
me I see it on your lance.”
“That ’s good clean blood of a whale!” retorted Mr. Baker. “There ’s
other blood waiting that ain’t so clean. I ’d hate to dirty a good
lance with it.”
“Cheap talk!” said the other contemptuously. “We don’t steal whales.”
The boat was now within an oar’s length of the side of the Battles.
“I ’m coming aboard,” said Mr. Baker, “to see Cap’n Coffin about
it—and about another matter.”
“You can’t see Cap’n Coffin,” replied the other, who seemed to be one
of the mates, and in command of the vessel at the moment, “and you
don’t come aboard of us. Sheer off there!”
A number of the men at the rail of the Battles showed {182}
themselves to have spades in their hands. They put the spades over
the side, and held them suspended there.
“Keep off!” said the mate of the Battles. “We ’ll smash it!”
For Mr. Baker had taken the boathook, and had hooked on to their
chains. He was drawing the boat up close, when a spade smashed down
on the boathook just back of the iron, and cut it off clean.
Perhaps it was too serious a matter for mere cursing. At any rate,
Mr. Baker said nothing at all for some seconds, to our great surprise.
“Very well,” he said then, quietly, “if you ’d rather have it that
way, so be it. I ’ll report it—fully. Now I make demand upon you for
Alonzo Wallet, formerly second mate of the Clearchus, a deserter from
his ship.”
The mate of the Battles smiled, and beckoned Mr. Wallet. He came,
with his weak smile again upon his face.
“What ’s wanted of me?” he asked.
“Cap’n Nelson wants you,” Mr. Baker replied, “strange as it may seem;
for you ’re the most good-for-nothing officer that ever I shipped
with.”
With those spades between him and Mr. Baker, Wallet’s courage had
revived, but he no longer smiled. He leaned over the rail as far as
he could, and shook a feeble finger at Mr. Baker.
“Tell the old man to go to hell,” he said; “and go to hell yourself,
will you, Jehoram? You ’re bound there now if you don’t look sharp.”
He pointed to the southwest. The sun had disappeared behind a heavy
mass of black cloud, in which there appeared, as we looked at it,
the glare of lightning. I had thought that it seemed early for it to
be getting dark, but it had not occurred to me to look. The mass of
clouds was but just above our horizon. A few men in the two boats had
observed it. Mr. Brown and Mr. Baker had seen it for {183} fifteen
or twenty minutes past. It may have accounted for Mr. Baker’s
readiness to cut short his controversy with the Battles.
“I ’ve known about that for some time, Wallet,” said Mr. Baker; “and
let me tell you that you ’re in much more danger of going to hell in
the next hour than I am. A whaleboat ’s the safest thing that rides
the sea. Maybe you did n’t know it. And you ’d better shorten sail
some more,” he added, “if you hope to ride it out.”
For the only answer to this the mate—if he was the mate—and Mr.
Wallet both turned and looked up at the sails. The men who had gone
aloft had been engaged in reefing the topsails in a very leisurely
manner. Now they had to put in another reef in response to orders
yelled by the mate, and they worked faster. Mr. Baker came back to
the whale, and the Battles slowly drifted to the southward, taking in
her great mainsail and her foresail and two of her jibs, leaving her
under staysail and double-reefed topsails. By the time that was done,
she had got well away from us, and the black cloud covered half the
heavens. Mr. Baker had rowed up to the whale, and had deliberately
planted another iron deep in the small, near his first one. I asked
no questions, but Mr. Brown must have read them in my face.
“Getting ready to ride it out, Tim,” he said, smiling kindly. We had
nothing to do, having fifteen or twenty fathoms of line out, and he
was leaning against the cleat, watching. “A whale ’s a ready made
sea-anchor, if he only stays afloat; and I guess he will. And we
shall be in his lee, where the seas won’t be quite so high—although
there ’s not much of the carcass showing.”
I turned and looked at the whale doubtfully.
“I should think, sir,” I ventured, “that Mr. Baker might foul us, or
we him, if he has about the same length of line that we have.”
“No,” Mr. Brown replied, smiling again. “A drifting {184} body
always drifts broadside to the wind—to the resistance. I could prove
that to you by mathematics if we had the chance, and if I had n’t
forgotten the proof. But experience proves the proof to be correct,
which is much more convincing than mere mathematics. You notice.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir, I will, if—”
Mr. Brown laughed. “If we get out of this, eh? We shall. Make your
mind easy.”
The carcass of the whale was lying nearly east and west under the
northerly wind. As the squall—pampero or whatever it was—advanced,
the wind dropped, until we were heaving on an oily swell in a flat
calm. The men in Mr. Baker’s boat took that chance of backing water,
and of working the body of the whale slowly around until it lay
very nearly north and south, while the squall was coming from the
southwest. Then there was nothing to do but to watch the clouds, and
to wait for the wind to strike.
The edge of the cloud seemed to be directly over us, writhing and
twisting, and it was almost as dark as night.
“There she comes,” said Mr. Brown quietly; and I saw what seemed a
blank wall of mist, with the black cloud above. We could see it some
miles away, and it was coming fast.
“Fog, sir?” I asked, puzzled.
“Rain, and hail, probably, and wind,” said Mr. Brown.
As it came on I could see the line of rain and hail, as sharp as
the cut side of a cheese; and there was a queer foaming commotion
in the water at the foot of the advancing wall. It had got almost
to the carcass of the whale before we felt the first cold puffs of
air. Those first cold puffs were from every direction, some straight
up; and the foaming commotion in the water resolved itself into an
infinite series of small geysers, from one to two feet high, like
columns of water sent up by explosions of shells, such as I have seen
many times in the last few years when the Fort has been at target
practice. At a distance of six {185} or seven miles, even through a
powerful glass, they look no higher than these did.
The edge of the wall reached the carcass, and there was a curious
effect of bombardment with small white rubber balls—I should have
thought at once of tennis balls if I had then ever seen a tennis
ball—the balls bounding high from the elastic surface of the carcass.
I knew it then for hail. The wall was past the whale, and completely
hid it from sight, less than a hundred feet off, and the wind struck
us like a blow from a chunk of ice. Then the hail struck us, hail
mixed with rain.
We hardly knew what to do to protect our heads. It was like being
pelted with rocks—rocks which there was no escaping. They were
everywhere. I instinctively put up my hands over my head, and had to
take them down again, for the bones of my hands were being bruised,
and I was really afraid they might be broken. None of us had a stiff
hat, but all wore soft hats or caps or were bareheaded. I did not
mind the wind—I was not conscious of it—and I did not see what the
others did; but I found myself crawling in the bottom of the boat,
partly under a thwart, and pulling out a corner of the sail to
protect my head. When I had time to think of anything but the safety
of my own head, I saw that the others had done the same thing.
I looked out from my protecting canvas, and saw the water absolutely
filled with those miniature geysers. The hail had beaten down the
sea, in spite of the furious wind, until the surface was almost as
smooth as a pond, with the rollers running under it as if the water
were covered with silk. After a while—perhaps half an hour, perhaps
a quarter—the hail stopped, and left only the rain and the wind, and
the rapidly growing seas. We were sitting in a deep slush of water
and hailstones, and the hailstones weighed heavily on my legs. They
were beautiful, round, white stones, many as large as robins’ eggs,
but most of {186} them the size of marbles. The boat was deep with
them, and rolled sluggishly. We had to get them out at once, which we
did with a couple of buckets, our hats and our hands, shoveling them
over the side.
I have never in my life known it to blow harder than it did in the
next few hours. We rode it out, safe in the lee of our sea anchor,
drenched to the skin, all of us, and very cold. Although the sea
rose very quickly as soon as the hail stopped, and ran very high,
the carcass of the whale seemed to smooth the seas out, and none
broke around us; but the boats stood almost on end. My heart was in
my mouth most of the time, but I do not think my apprehensions were
evident to the others. Heaven knows I tried hard enough, for I was
even more afraid of showing fear than I was of the wind and the sea.
I think the fact that we were in a small boat, and near the water,
was a help. I was more used to that, and, somehow, I never feel so
helpless in a small boat as I do in a ship. I have not got over that
feeling to this day. I suppose I should have felt better still if
I had been alone or with no one but Jimmy Appleby. A man seems to
have more of a chance in a small boat, and is not subject to the
orders—and the mistakes—of somebody. That somebody might be like Mr.
Wallet. If there is a mistake, it is his own.
Night fell while it was blowing viciously and raining. In a few hours
the rain stopped, but the wind did not. It seemed to blow harder, and
it gradually shifted to the southeast; and after a while the stars
came out. I do not know how long it was, for I had lost all sense of
time. I had got over the worst of my scare, and I was too tired to
think. I crouched down in the boat, and I fell asleep, soaked and
cold as I was.
It was gray dawn when I awoke, stiff and cramped. I saw Mr. Brown
in his place, gazing out at the eastern sky. He had been awake all
night, ready to cut if the carcass of the whale showed signs of
sinking; but it was still {187} afloat, and no lower in the water
than it had been the night before. Mr. Baker’s boat was so near that
we could almost have touched oars.
I made some noise in crawling out. Mr. Brown turned his head
and smiled at me, but said nothing. I took that as a sort of an
invitation. I got up and stood beside him, and we looked out together
over that desolate waste of heaving gray water, with the white tops
of breaking seas, and a faint touch of light here and there, and gray
clouds driving over, but no color yet. I was oppressed with that
feeling of melancholy and loneliness—and littleness—which always
seized me at such a time. I think Mr. Brown felt it too. I looked
around me, and saw two men evidently just awake, and the Prince
standing like a statue, silent and dignified, gazing at the east.
I could not help wondering afresh what he was in his own country,
and what was his own country. Whatever country it was, he ought to
have been a chief in it—_princeps_—instead of being no more than a
boatsteerer on a whaler, and the associate of men few of whom were
his equals. If it had been the fashion to be black, instead of white,
even the officers, excepting Mr. Brown and Mr. Macy, would have been
his acknowledged inferiors.
There was no sign of the Battles or of the Clearchus—nothing within
our horizon but the wide ocean, deep indigo in the distance, with
great seas rolling and tumbling, dark green near the boat, their tops
a ghastly white. After an hour or two my heart began to sink. How
could it be expected that anybody would find us, a speck in that vast
and dreary expanse of ocean? Mr. Brown seemed confident enough, but
my heart had sunk down into my soaked boots when, in the middle of
the forenoon, he spoke to me. No doubt he guessed my feelings. They
may have been evident enough.
“See there, Tim; almost abeam of us.”
We were streaming out to the northwest behind the {188} whale. I
looked, but I could see nothing but the tops of distant seas rising
and falling. I shook my head.
“Can’t you make it out? Three stubby topmasts, almost in line, and
the to’gallan’yards? If you knew them as well as I do—”
“The Clearchus?”
He nodded. “I think so. I ’m pretty sure.”
He was right, as he was apt to be. Mr. Baker had seen it too. The
Clearchus picked us up before noon, got the whale alongside, and
began to cut-in at once, rough and blowing as it was. She had been
caught by the blow with Mr. Macy’s whale alongside. They saw the blow
coming, and tried to save the case, but they did not succeed, and the
whale broke adrift, taking some of our tackle with it. They had to
cut and run for it. We never saw that whale again.
It moderated toward the middle of the afternoon, and by the time we
were ready to try out, we had a clear sky and a gentle breeze.
{189}