We had the usual variations in weather, some good, some bad, but
none very bad, to the Carroll grounds. For two thirds of the way the
wind was mostly pretty strong from the west or southwest, giving
the Clearchus what she liked best; for the last third of the way
it drew in from the southeast, although we were not at any time in
the region of the steady southeast trades, merely touching upon the
border of that region toward the very last of the run. We ran into
no gales, and made a passage of about five weeks, arriving on the
Carroll grounds the last week in March. We then shortened sail,
and began to cruise. It was the captain’s intention to quarter the
ground thoroughly once, making slowly to the southeast, which was the
windward side, and then to beat up for the Cape.
For a week we beat back and forth in fine weather without a sign of a
whale. I had almost ceased to think of them, and spent my spare time
in surreptitious games with Peter or with the group of men who were
usually gathered about him; or I stood by the windlass or sat between
the knightheads—anywhere where I could not be spied from aft—and
looked out ahead over the white-capped seas, feeling the brisk wind
on my cheeks, and listening to the noise of the water under the bows,
and to the gentle creaking of the spars and rigging. To me those are
inexpressibly soothing sounds; they have always been so, and are to
this day. The noises of the life of the ship—not very loud at their
worst, in such a case—are far behind you, and they come faintly to
your ears, as if from another world. They do not seem real, as do the
bubbling of the water under the bow, and the wash of it as it passes
{194} astern, and the faint noise of breaking seas, and the soft
sound of the wind on the sails.
That pleasant mode of life was not to last forever. One afternoon I
was lying on my back on the heel of the bowsprit. I had just finished
my chores after dinner, and had lain down to gaze up at the sails,
full and straining, and at the sky above them. My gaze travelled up
the foremast, past the topsails, which were braced well around, for
we were sailing with the wind forward of the beam. The fore truck
described slow ellipses against the sky, and I was fascinated in
watching them. Now and then I caught a glimpse, past the bellying
topsail, of the masthead man. He seemed very far up. He was leaning
wearily against the hoops, as if he might have been asleep. Suddenly
he straightened alertly. I knew what to expect then, and I sat up as
the cry floated down to me; then I jumped to my feet, and ran to Mr.
Brown’s boat.
There were two spouts, about three miles to leeward, and the whales
seemed to be travelling at about the same rate as the ship, and
pretty near together. The spouts rose as regularly as the exhaust of
a tugboat, although nowhere near as fast; there were ten or twelve
seconds between them. The ship was laid around on a course nearly
parallel with that of the whales, and we waited to see if they would
not go down to feed. There was no sign of their doing so, however,
and after waiting over twenty minutes, we lowered three boats. Our
boat—that means Mr. Brown’s—was one of the three. I took my place in
it without asking leave, but as Mr. Brown looked right at me, and
made no objection, and as the Prince even smiled at me, I thought it
was probably what was expected.
[Illustration: LOWERING BOATS]
By hard pulling we got right in the course of the whales, Mr. Baker
and ourselves taking the farther one, and Mr. Macy the nearer. Our
whale was a little in advance of the other. Then we waited, our oars
in our hands, to be ready for any change of course of the whales.
Approaching a {195} whale head on is one of the favorite ways,
for a whale cannot see anything directly ahead of him, strange and
inconvenient as that may seem. The whales came on in a business-like
way, rising to spout, then pitching under, until they were perhaps
within fifty or sixty feet of the boats. The Prince was all set to
strike, and the four oarsmen gripping their oars hard, I, at least,
with my nerves on edge. Then the whales brought up suddenly; stopped
as completely as if they had run into a wall. Something had excited
their suspicion, although the men in the boats were as still as
death. Our whale—I should not have called him ours so soon—raised his
head from the water, as if listening, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown
signalled the men to pull up. It was only a little way, and the two
boats almost leaped from the water. I could see nothing of the whale,
pulling, as I was, with my back to him, and my eyes glued to the oar
of the man in front of me, but I could imagine that whale pricking up
his ears, if he had had any. Mr. Baker’s boat was just abeam of us,
to take him on his other side. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the
men in her laying to it, and the spray flying from her bow.
It is utterly useless to dart the harpoon at the front of a sperm
whale. The weapon almost always bounds back as if it were a mass of
rubber it had struck against. We had to get as far as his eye before
a chance would be offered. I saw his great cliff-like head shoot
by. Then, as we came within range of his vision, within ten feet of
him, he suddenly sank away from the boat and out of sight like a
lump of lead, without a motion of his fins, or his flukes either, so
far as I could judge by hearing. The Prince had darted, and so had
Starbuck—and had missed by inches, at ten feet. It was comical to see
the consternation and amazement of Starbuck, and I have no doubt the
Prince’s surprise was nearly as great, although he would not show it
so plainly. I did hear a grunt from him, however, and an exclamation.
The harpoons had clashed under {196} water. When they were hauled
in, the Prince found the shank of his bent, and a gouge, fresh and
bright, deep in the shank at the point of bending; and the edge of
Starbuck’s was dulled and turned.
Mr. Macy’s boat, with George Hall the boat-steerer, had an exactly
similar experience. Mr. Macy had not headed that boat long enough
to overcome entirely the effect of Wallet’s slackness and generally
slipshod way of doing things, and his crew did not respond quite so
quickly or so well. Consequently his whale had just enough warning to
begin to move, but not enough time to get under way, or to find out
definitely what was up. His only escape was to sink from the head of
the boat as quickly as a marlinspike that has been dropped overboard,
or an anchor. Hall, however, had no chance to dart, and he had had
experience enough to know it. We did not see those whales again
except at a distance which was perfectly safe, and then they were
swimming head out, making ten or twelve knots.
Later in the day I came upon a sort of a consolation gathering.
Starbuck and the Prince and George Hall were the central figures,
and there were the other two boatsteerers, Azevedo and Miller, and
all the green hands standing on the fringe of the circle, with two
or three older men. Starbuck was much mortified at his failure,
and offered what excuse he could. The Prince may have been as much
mortified as Starbuck, but he offered no excuse and said little.
Hall was giving comfort, saying that it was not uncommon for
whales to settle in that way, and escape, when they had no time to
round out flukes and sound, although he did not see how they did
it. No harpooner was to be blamed for missing a whale under those
circumstances.
Then there was a babel of voices, each man who had seen it happen and
thought about it at all—a man could hardly help thinking about it if
he had once seen {197} it—giving his own theory of how it was done.
They seemed to run to the idea of interior ballast tanks. Hall smiled.
“It does not seem quite quick enough,” he said. “The whale would have
to take in water ballast pretty sudden to sink as quick as he does.
Besides, water won’t sink in water. If he could take in lead or old
junk into his tanks, it would be different. I know that gannets have
something like that, cells under the skin that they can fill or empty
of air through their lungs; and man-o’-war birds have something of
the kind, I believe, and so have other birds. I ’ve seen ’em and
you ’ve all seen ’em. They seem to contract when they want to get
down pretty quick. But I don’t pretend to know how a whale does it.”
There was more talk which I could not follow. After a while Azevedo
asked Hall about what he called the “slick” or “glip,” and how he
thought that communication was kept up. I did not know what they were
talking about, of course. Hall shook his head, and said he had never
seen any evidence of communication, although he had heard of it, but
he would not commit himself on the subject, and he asked Peter. Peter
said that he did not know anything about it.
“What is that, Peter?” I asked in an undertone. “What ’s glip?” I
knew what a slick was.
“I don’t rightly know, Tim,” he answered. “Whales always leave a
slick—a smooth place, oily-like—on the water when they round out and
sound quietly. It must be something like the oil bags we had over our
bows in that gale off Hatteras. But they say that there ’s a sort of
a telegraph between the whale and his slick—as far as I can make out,
that there ’s a way the whole school has of knowing if a boat so much
as crosses the line between a whale and his slick. So, if a boat gets
into the slick, or crosses that line, the whole school goes tearing
to windward. It may be so,” he added, shaking his head. “I don’t say
it ain’t, for you hear of many curious things at {198} sea that turn
out to be true, but it seems a trifle too much like magic to me. So I
say that I don’t know anything about it, and that ’s true enough. I
don’t.”
I laughed. To me it seemed like a fairy tale; but, as Peter had said,
you hear of many curious things at sea which turn out to be true, and
this might be one of them. If it is true I can think of no possible
explanation. I do not know the truth of the matter to this day.
A few days later we sighted another spout. Mr. Brown and Mr. Baker
lowered for him, for they said that the Prince and Starbuck ought to
have another chance. This was a lone whale, which very obligingly
waited for us to come up with him, and both boats got fast. He put up
no fight at all, and in a quarter of an hour he lay fin out. This was
the sort of thing that disgusted me with whaling, and made it seem
nothing more than a bloody, dirty business, which tended to brutalize
the men who took part in it. A whale should be willing—determined—to
fight for his life, if it was worth anything to him. A fight made
it all worth while, and the better the fight the more worth while
it seemed, to me, at any rate. The prospect of a good fight always
did fill me with elation, in spite of myself. I confess that it does
even now, in spite of my age and experience, which has been acquired
uniformly in the avoidance of fights; but any kind of a fight seems
good to me, in my heart of hearts. It is a reprehensible instinct,
but it is just as surely an instinct as it is reprehensible according
to our modern code.
This whale may not have regarded his life as of sufficient value
to be worth fighting for. At any rate, his actions and appearance
aroused suspicions, and when he was cut-in the suspicions were
apparently confirmed, for the blubber was light and dry. Accordingly,
instead of cutting the carcass adrift, they cut into it, and
proceeded to investigate his internal economy with spades and knives.
I hung over the rail and watched the operation with much {199}
interest. It reminded me of the occasion, five or six years before,
when Jimmy Appleby and I had dissected two rats, with rather dull
knives, on the top of his high back fence. We got thoroughly smeared
with blood and gurry, but found nothing of value, and did not add to
our information on the subject of rats. The whale was much the same,
so far as I could see. The men got very thoroughly smeared, but they
found nothing of value.
While we were in the midst of this bloody business, and most of the
men who were not engaged in it were hanging over the rail, as I was,
I felt a tap upon my shoulder. I turned and saw Peter, who took me to
the port side.
“Look there, Timmie,” he said, pointing.
I had no trouble in seeing what he was pointing at. It was the Annie
Battles, only three or four miles off, and headed directly for us.
There was a brisk breeze, which she had just forward of the beam,
very nearly her best point of sailing. She was coming fast, and was a
pretty sight, I thought. Peter had the same thought. We watched her
in silence for some minutes, and then he sighed and shook his head.
“A pretty sight,” he said, “and an able boat. There ’s none better,
and it ’s a pity.”
“A pity that there ’s none better?” I asked.
“A pity that it should mean trouble every time she heaves in sight. I
don’t know what kind of mischief she ’s up to this time, but look at
our officers, lad. They don’t know either, but they expect trouble of
some kind. Would n’t you think so yourself?”
Captain Nelson, with Mr. Baker, Mr. Brown and Mr. Macy, was standing
just forward of the after house, his glass at his eye. None of
the four were saying anything, but all were gazing soberly at the
Battles, which held her course as if she meant to run us down. The
captain said something in a low tone to Mr. Baker, who nodded and
started leisurely forward. {200}
“I wish,” said Peter, “that she ’d leave us alone, and get about her
business. It ’s over two months since we ’ve seen her, and I hoped
that was the last. But she seems to be keeping tabs on us, and to
know just where to find us. She ’ll keep turning up, like enough, all
through our voyage, just when we ’ve begun to forget her. I ’d give
something to know what they ’re up to. What does she want, anyway?
What is she doing it for?”
It is very likely, even in the light of our later knowledge of the
Annie Battles, that they were not up to anything in particular, and
did not want anything except to plague us, and exasperate us, and
set us all to wondering just as they were doing. At sea, on a long
voyage, with a faster vessel, and the certainty of being able to
sail around us in any weather, that exasperation could be carried to
a high pitch. We had no means of knowing what was going on in the
Battles; but, all this granted, I could not guess their motive. It
was possible that they were after our whales, but Captain Coffin was
an able whaling master, and if that was the explanation—I put the
question to Peter.
“Oh, no, lad,” he replied quickly. “If that was the reason, they ’d
just stay with us—dog us about. They don’t do that, but—Aye, aye,
sir.”
For Mr. Baker had come up to us, and was telling Peter to go to his
boat, but not to hurry. They did not want any stir on the decks. Then
he passed on to tell others of his crew the same thing. Mr. Macy
was strolling about the deck on a similar errand. One by one the
men drifted down to their boats, cast off the lashings, and stood
with the falls in their hands, ready to lower. The Battles was still
coming on, headed directly for us. She was a mile away, and the
men stood like statues by their boats; the distance diminished to
a half-mile and then to a quarter. There was a deep silence on the
ship, while the noise of the surgeons at the operating-table rose to
us over the starboard rail. They knew nothing of the Battles. When
the schooner {201} was a cable’s length away she was still heading
directly for us, and seemed likely to strike us amidships.
It was too much for Mr. Baker. “Ahoy, there!” he roared. “Damn you,
do you want to run us down?”
“Are you there?” cried a jeering voice from the Battles. “Why don’t
you lower?”
As the sound of the voice reached us, however, the Battles kept off
a little, so that she would just clear our stern. Captain Nelson
nodded, and Mr. Macy lowered instantly, cast off, and the men pulled
hard to intercept her. They did not quite succeed in doing that, and
the Battles swept by with her main chains about six inches beyond
the utmost reach of Hall’s boathook. Hall made an instant decision.
Throwing down the boathook, he grabbed a harpoon, to which the whale
line was already bent, and darted with all his force at the chains
of the Battles. The harpoon stuck in the hull and quivered there for
a moment, between the chains; then, as strain came on it, it pulled
out, having nothing to hold it, the barb caught on the chains, and
there they were towing as comfortably as ever they did behind a whale.
From the deck of the Battles there came a roar for a sharp spade,
while Mr. Macy was exhorting his men to heave and heave hearty. There
were only a few feet to gain, for the whaleboat was almost lapping
the hull of the schooner. What they would have done when they had
gained a place under her quarter I could not imagine. I wondered. Mr.
Macy might have been in the same predicament, but it was not likely.
He was not the man to go ahead without plan, and he was working as
if for a definite end. What that plan was we were not to know, for
the spades succeeded in severing the line before the hulls lapped,
and the frayed end dropped into the water. It was fortunate, perhaps.
What chance would six men have had against twenty or more?
In the brief struggle the Battles had gone on farther {202} than she
meant to, and was now some distance astern of us; but as soon as she
had succeeded in dropping Mr. Macy she stood up along our starboard
beam, a short distance away. Meanwhile, Mr. Baker’s boat had been
lowered, taking the captain, and had pulled out a few boat’s lengths,
and lay there, waiting for the Battles. The men who had been working
on the carcass of the whale had stopped work, and stood watching to
see what would happen.
The Battles came on until she was nearly abeam of us, then she
slacked off her sheets, spilling the wind from her sails. Her crew
seemed interested in the surgical operation on the whale.
“Did you find any?” hailed the man who seemed to be in command.
Captain Nelson paid no attention to this question, but his men pulled
toward the schooner.
“What do you want?” the man demanded sharply. “Keep off! Stay where
you are, and let’s settle it.”
“I ’m coming aboard of you,” Captain Nelson said. “I ’m coming to see
Cap’n Coffin. There are some matters to be settled between us.”
The Battles was shooting ahead, losing way slowly, and the men in the
captain’s boat again began pulling.
“You can’t see Cap’n Coffin,” the man began impatiently. “You ’ve
been told that often enough. Damn it,” he added, almost changing
his mind, “if I should let you come aboard and see Cap’n Coffin,
I ’d warrant you ’d have all the time you wanted to settle any
matters that ’re on your mind. It ’d serve you right, and if the
consequences ’d be all on your own head, I ’d do it. But they
would n’t and I won’t. I never will. Understand?”
We heard the conversation plainly, and I was curious to know what
he meant by his remark about consequences. It did not seem to give
Captain Nelson any concern. He made no reply, and the boat continued
to pull toward the {203} schooner. Mr. Macy had been coming up
quietly while the Battles was busy with Captain Nelson, and he was
not far astern, his men pulling strongly and easily. We heard the
order to trim in the sheets, and at the same time several men took
their places at the side, holding spades in their hands. It was their
old trick. The captain’s boat was only a few strokes off.
“Keep off!” was the warning.
For answer Starbuck grabbed for the chains with the boathook. A spade
smashed down upon it and knocked it out of his hand. The sheets of
the Battles had been trimmed in, she heeled to the breeze, began to
gather speed, and was slowly passing the bow of the boat. Starbuck
leaped, landed on her wales, and had one leg over the rail before the
men on the Battles knew what he was after. Before he could get the
other leg over, three men seized him; I saw them struggle with him
for an instant, break his hold on the rail, and throw him into the
sea.
The Battles was now well under way, the boat was fast dropping
astern, and Starbuck was in the water. Mr. Macy was not quite up,
and it was a hopeless chase from the start, but both boats tried to
make a race of it for a quarter of a mile. When they gave it up, and
stopped rowing, I saw Wallet come out from behind the quarter boat,
where he had been standing, hidden from us, and take his place at
the topsail. It was too far to see clearly without a glass what he
was doing there, but he seemed to put his thumb to his nose at Mr.
Baker and the captain. That was too much for me, and I laughed until
I nearly had hysterics, it was so like him.
The boats lay there for some time, the men all watching the Battles
fast disappearing in the distance. Then they pulled slowly back
to the ship. Starbuck had swum to the ship, and stood dripping
beside me, watching the Battles with sober eyes. When I laughed so
immoderately, he turned his eyes upon me with disapproval, but he
{204} took the contagion, and, much against his will, he was forced
to smile.
“But it ’s no laughing matter, Tim,” he said. “I ’d like to know
what ’s wrong on that vessel. There ’s something wrong. I know Fred
Coffin well. We live only a few doors apart—only two houses between
us, and we were at school together. He is n’t so much older than me;
three years, about. I hope nothing ’s happened to him.”
“Why,” I said, “what could happen to him—on his own vessel?”
“Anything,” Starbuck answered. “Anything at all. Ever hear the story
of the ship Junior and Cap’n Arch Mellen? It happened in fifty-eight,
or fifty-seven, but it ’s all true, and it might happen now—any time,
unless men’s hearts are changed.”
“Tell me,” I said eagerly. “I never heard of it; I never even heard
of the ship Junior.”
He smiled down at me; after all, not so much down, for I was nearly
as tall as he.
“There ’s a good many ships you never heard of, I guess. I ’ll tell
you the story of the ship Junior, the first chance I get. The boats
are coming back now, and I want to get into dry clothes.”
By the time the boats were on the davits the Battles was more than
hull down to the southward, and was fast sinking her topsails.
{205}