Our liberty men appeared in various stages of dejection from their
Oriental haunts of infamy, but none were missing, and we sailed
for the eastward, to cruise about the Seychelles. Smith had been
assigned to Mr. Brown’s boat, to take my oar, for I was nothing but a
substitute. I was chagrined, but there was nothing to be done about
it. Mr. Brown was sorry, but again there was nothing to be done about
it. He could not object unless he wanted to open the matter which he
had resolutely kept closed—to everybody but me, as I believed—and
Smith was a thorough seaman, as far as there had been opportunity
to tell. He started out, in fact, as a model, his only fault being
that he was a little too much of a gentleman for the forecastle. The
men were suspicious of him, and held off at first. Mr. Baker was
suspicious of him too. He said it was too good to be true; that a man
with his history behind him for the past ten years—he was convinced
of the truth of his inferences in that matter—would be as good as
that only if he was up to some trick. Smith was a man to watch, and
he proposed to keep his eye on him.
I tried to sound Mr. Brown on the subject of Smith, but met with no
success. He turned his quiet smile upon me. “He ’s a pretty good shot
with a knife,” he said, “is n’t he, Tim? It must have taken a great
deal of practice. And he seems to be a quiet sort of man, and a good
sailor. We have n’t lowered yet, but I ’ve no’ doubt that he ’ll
prove as good in the boat.”
He did. We got no whales on the Seychelles grounds, but we saw
several, and Mr. Brown’s boat was down nearly every time. Smith
pulled an oar in perfect form, and he pulled a strong oar, rather to
everybody’s surprise, {240} for he was very thin, and did not seem
muscular. I suppose he was wiry, and I knew that he was not burdened
with any kind of tissue that he did not need. He was pleasant to
everybody, respectful to the officers, and he did not seem surly and
disgruntled at having to pull for hours after a whale which finally
got away. He soon won the confidence of the men. The confidence of
the officers was not so easy. Mr. Brown could feel no confidence, I
was sure, and I was almost equally sure of Mr. Baker. Mr. Snow was
surly and irritable, and getting worse. He was on bad terms with his
crew, and seemed determined to haze Silver, who had been subjected to
that process ever since leaving Cape Town.
I was sorry for Silver, but I could do nothing. None of the men could
do anything for him. Captain Nelson could have stopped it, but he
did not, for some reason or other. Silver was getting more and more
desperate and morose, and was looking for a chance to get away. The
Seychelles might have offered him a chance, but we did not enter a
port there, nor send a boat ashore. Even if his boat had gone ashore
his chance of escaping would have been slim, for Mr. Snow was aware
that Silver would desert if he got a chance, and would have kept
an eye on him. For that matter, none of Mr. Snow’s crew were to be
trusted now, with the exception of Miller, the boatsteerer. All the
officers and all the men knew that, and Mr. Snow’s boat would have
been the last one chosen to go ashore.
We were often within sight of land, about eight or ten miles from it.
One day, after a morning of light and variable airs, and an afternoon
of flat calm, the ship had drifted in until darkness found us not
more than four miles from shore. I think the officers were a little
worried about it. An anchor was got ready, and chain overhauled, but
the anchor was not put over. It was a hot night, the only really
hot night we had in that neighborhood; moonless, {241} with light
clouds overspreading the sky. Practically the whole crew were on
deck throughout the evening. They made rather a crowd about the fore
part of the ship, from knightheads to try-works. I was aware of a
subtle stir among them, and I drifted forward to see what it meant,
or whether it meant anything. Mr. Macy passed me, probably on the
same errand; but he could find nothing, and after a turn about the
windlass, he passed me again, on his way back. I sat down by the
windlass, and pretty soon I heard a hoarse whisper.
“ ’D he get away clear?”
“Ye’,” another voice replied in a low growl, “all clear. Hope the
sharks don’t get him. Water ’s swarmin’ with ’em. Tried to persuade
him to wait, but he would n’t. Said they might ’s well ’s that fourth
mate. He ’s to light a fire if he gets ashore—matches sealed up with
grease in a tin. We ’re to watch for it.”
“How soon?”
“Dunno. How long ’ll it take to swim four miles? Two hours or better,
I should think—if he makes it at all.”
The whispering drifted away. Within half an hour we saw lightning at
a great distance to the northwest. It came nearer, and a little air
puffed in our faces; increased to a gentle breeze. The thunder-storm
did not strike us, but the breeze continued long enough for us to get
away from the immediate neighborhood of the land. By the time the
two hours were up, we were too far away to see a fire kindled on the
beach, and I never knew whether poor Silver got safely to shore or
not. I never saw him or heard of him again.
There was not the slightest effort made to get Silver back. Indeed,
there was no chance unless the ship had been delayed for some days,
for that was our last sight of the Seychelles. We stood away to the
northward for the Arabian Sea, to cruise around there for some weeks,
mostly in the northern part. One thing that Silver’s desertion {242}
did for me was to restore me to Mr. Brown’s boat. Smith was given
Silver’s oar in Mr. Snow’s boat, whether at Mr. Brown’s request or
not I did not know, but I thought not. It was not like Mr. Brown to
make such a request, although he must have been glad of the change,
even if Smith did pull a better oar than I. The vacancy in Mr. Macy’s
boat ever since Silvia’s desertion at Cape Town had been filled by
the sailmaker, who continued to fill it without much grumbling.
It was hot up there in the Arabian Sea, with the wind mostly from
the northward—from the land—and many days of calm weather. There
was no bad weather to speak of. We sighted spouts some half-dozen
times, chased without result every time but two, hard pulling in a
temperature that made the sweat pour off the men in rivers—except
Smith. He seemed to be immune to any temperature that could be
raised, and laughed at the men for sweating so. Mr. Snow’s opinion of
him could only be guessed, but he seemed to have a great and growing
respect for him, and he did not so much as bat an eyelid at him. This
may have been due in part to his reputation as a thrower of a knife;
a reputation which clung to him and which could not be ignored.
You thought of it at once whenever you thought of Smith; could not
dissociate the man from his reputation.
He rapidly became a favorite, and there was no reason why he should
not. He was a superlatively good man in a boat, especially in that
climate; he was always respectful, and while he was no boot-licker,
he never forgot the deference which Snow liked. Snow was a little
man, little in nature as in stature; and I have found little men to
be generally more rigidly insistent upon the outward observance of
forms than bigger men. There seems to be something in mere size which
tends to a greater serenity, and to a scorn for such forms. So Snow
was quite satisfied with outward observance. {243}
We got three whales there, of moderate size. There was nothing
remarkable about their capture, and they were put fin out with no
more trouble than shooting a steer in a stall at Brighton. Two of
them were alongside at one time, and sharks were so plentiful and so
voracious—they are always that—that it was all we could do to save
any of the blubber from the second whale. They had it almost stripped
before we could get at it, in spite of our best efforts.
Our third whale was the cause of an incident which greatly amused
everybody on board. We were in about latitude 12° N., longitude 60°
E., nearly in the track of steamers to Bombay from the east coast
of Africa. Our try-works was going full blast, sending up a huge
column of black and oily smoke, which rose to a great height in the
still air. It was very hot and quite calm, and the men, clad in
nothing but shirts and old trousers—many of them had dispensed with
the shirt—were sweating, cursing, and grumbling at the foul, sticky
smoke, which choked them and made them look like coal-heavers or
worse. Suddenly there was a cry of “Sail ho!” All, without stopping
their work, followed the direction of the lookout, and gazed off to
the southward. Pretty soon the smoke of a steamer appeared; then her
stack, and then her upper works rose out of the sea. She was heading
straight for us, and the belching smoke from her stack showed that
she was crowding her furnaces. She continued to come on, straight for
us, until she was perhaps four miles away, and we could see that she
was no tramp, but a regular passenger steamer which ran to Bombay
and ports farther east. At that distance she could see us clearly,
without the possibility of making a mistake as to our character. She
seemed to be seized with sudden disgust, made as quick a turn as she
could, and stood off on her course to the northeast.
Many of the crew guffawed. “Thought we were afire,” {244} one man
said, “and found that we were nothing but a damned whaler. Could n’t
be any worse,” he added, “if we were afire. That ’s the way I feel
now.”
Peter was sorry. “Too bad that she made that mistake,” he said to
me later. “Whalers do get afire sometimes, Timmie, and the smoke
would n’t be very different. Other ships, too, as I know well, though
the smoke of it ’s apt to be different. When her officers see a good
deal of smoke again, they ’ll probably say it ’s only another damned
whaler, and hold their course. There was a ship I sailed in once,
carrying grain. It got afire somehow and smouldered for weeks.”
He seemed to have finished. I was impatient.
“What did you do, Peter?”
“Do, lad?” he asked, with his quiet smile. “We did n’t do anything
but batten down the hatches tighter ’n ever, and try to smother
it. We made our port, but the decks were too hot to stand on with
comfort.”
“Why did n’t you put any water on the fire? That would have put it
out, would n’t it?”
He smiled again. “Aye, I s’pose it would. But wet down grain?
’T would have split her wide open.”
We left the Arabian Sea with seven hundred and fifty barrels of
oil in our hold, and stood to the eastward, as far as the Maldive
Islands. Fifteen months out, and seven hundred and fifty barrels, and
it would take nearly twenty-four hundred barrels to fill us up. If we
did no better than that, on the average, it meant three years more of
it before we could be sailing into Buzzards Bay, a full ship. But I
did not know that I cared greatly.
We had good weather, on the whole, to the Maldives. There were a
good many days of calm or light airs, and we ran into one gale that
continued for a little more than a day, and blew itself out. It did
not seem so very bad, although it kept the men busy and wet. For the
greater part of the time it was very pleasant sailing, with the {245}
wind dead astern or on the port quarter, and not too hot if I could
lie on my back in the shadow of a sail, and look up at the sky and
the foretruck describing a slow ellipse against it. The heel of the
bowsprit was my favorite place, but on our present point of sailing
that was fairly in the sun until the afternoon was half gone, even
with the staysails out to starboard; and nobody—no white man—could
bear the sun beating down upon him long with any comfort. I could
stand the smell of the ship, which blew over me as I lay there.
Indeed, I liked the smell of the ship. It was chiefly of oil and tar
and rope and general hotness, and it brought back vividly to my mind
the wharves of New Bedford on a summer noon.
When I had any time in the mornings I used to stand just abaft the
foremast on the port side. It was wiser, of course, not to be caught
loafing, although the officers would usually fail to see me when I
was in plain sight. Standing so, I gazed off at the dimpling sea—on
two occasions I saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon, and once I saw
a sail—or, looking down, I watched the little wave, continuously
breaking, which our bows pushed aside. We often had schools of flying
fish about us, and sometimes I could see great numbers of albacore
about the ship, a fish not unlike our horse-mackerel. The albacore
chased the flying fish—not into the air, although they would often
leap clear of the water—and caught them, too, by being on hand when
they struck the water again. The albacore had their enemies. One
morning I noticed that the albacore were huddled close to the ship,
swimming in close ranks. Suddenly they disappeared—they had gone to
the other side of the hull, I found—and I saw a swift shadow pass
where they had been. It looked much like a shark swimming fast, at a
considerable depth. Then the albacore were back again, and the shadow
returned. The albacore scattered and fled, and the pursuer, a great
swordfish, was among them, slashing with his {246} sword, killing
three or four. When they were gone, the swordfish returned from the
pursuit, I suppose, and ate those he had killed. I did not see that
part of it. We saw swordfish more than once, big fellows, twelve feet
long or more, apparently basking on the surface. The men called them
sail-fish. They have an enormous back fin, folded down on the back
when they swim fast, but often erect above the water when they lie at
the surface. It acts like a sail, and carries them along at a very
fair speed.
We were to see another phase of the activities of the swordfish. We
had got nearly to the Maldives, about 72° east longitude, when the
hail came down from aloft: “There she breaches! And white waters!”
Everybody looked. It was a lone whale, rather a small one as far as
we could judge at that distance, about three miles off on the weather
bow. It was kicking up extraordinary antics, sounding briefly, then
coming up on a half breach; lobtailing; running for a short distance,
when it would give it up, and begin all over again.
The officers watched the whale while we stood toward it. At last Mr.
Baker was satisfied.
“Swordfish,” he said.
The whale remained nearly in the same spot while we came up. His
attention was so completely taken up by the swordfish that we did not
lower until the ship was considerably less than a quarter of a mile
away. Then we put down two boats, Mr. Baker’s and Mr. Brown’s, which
ran down under both sail and oars. We did not think it necessary to
avoid making a noise, for the whale could not get away if he wanted
to. By the time we had got nearly within darting distance, he had
almost ceased struggling, and seemed about ready to give up the
ghost. The Prince was just standing up and reaching for his iron,
and Mr. Baker’s boat was approaching from the other side. Out of the
corner of my eye I could see Starbuck taking his harpoon from the
crotch. {247}
Suddenly the Prince gave a yell: “Swordfish! Look out!”
Mr. Brown heaved mightily on the steering oar, to lay the boat
around, but it was too late. There was a sharp crack, we felt the
boat rise under us, and Kane cried out in surprise and pain. I turned
my head around quickly—I had no business to do so, and I knew it as
soon as I had time to think. I saw the point of the sword sticking
up beside Kane’s thigh. Kane had dropped his oar, grabbed the sword
point with both hands, and was yelling for the iron. The sword had
gone through the thin planking—the garboard strake—and through the
thwart, and had given Kane a flesh wound in the thigh. It was a
narrow escape for Kane, but he was not thinking of that. His whole
mind was upon holding the sword without cutting his hands too badly.
The swordfish was thrashing about viciously, shaking the boat, and
threatening to break out the bottom planking. It all happened more
quickly than I can tell it. The Prince was alert, and he reached
over, and jabbed the harpoon clear through the fish. Then he seized
a lance, and churned it up and down through the heart of the fish,
turning it as he churned. He could not reach the gills, where
swordfish are usually lanced. The violent struggles of the swordfish
ceased, he quivered once, and lay still; but his sword remained
sticking through the thwart even after Kane had let go of it, and
Kane’s thigh was bleeding freely.
“Badly hurt, Kane?” Mr. Brown asked.
“No, sir,” said Kane, hammering on the end of the sword with his
paddle, which he had taken from its place for the purpose. “If I can
only get this bloody sword out—but it ’s stuck tight.”
“All the better,” said Mr. Brown. “Heave on the line, boys, and break
it off.”
At the second heave a heavy strain came on the line, and at the third
there was another sharp crack, and the {248} sword broke off at the
nose. The broken sword remained sticking through the planking and the
thwart, and the body of the fish came up alongside the boat. It was a
big fish, two thirds the length of the boat.
While we were having it out with the swordfish, Mr. Baker had
fastened to the whale, which was already dead, and we lay there and
waited for the ship. There had been at least four swordfish attacking
the whale, and nobody knew how many more. The whale, a small bull
of thirty-seven barrels as he afterward tried out, stood no chance
at all against half a dozen big swordfish, which were of a kind
fairly common in the Indian Ocean, about twice as long as those
I was familiar with. We got our prize on deck, and ate it within
the next few days. The flesh was a little coarser than that of the
smaller ones, but very good. We got others from time to time, as
chances offered, as long as we were in their waters, and dolphins and
porpoises occasionally.
Attacks by swordfish upon boats are not uncommon. It seems likely
enough that they mistake the hull of the boat for the body of a
whale. Attacks on the hull of a ship, however, seem to me to be due
to accident. The fish which are the common prey of the swordfish
often huddle close to the hull of a vessel, and the swordfish, in its
attack upon them, may run its sword into the hull, although there
have been instances where several swordfish have made a concerted
attack upon the hull. We had a sword penetrate the planking of the
Clearchus later on, before we had got out of the Indian Ocean, which
I was convinced was due to accident. The sword went cleanly through
the copper, the sheathing, a three-inch oak plank, and an oak rib,
and stuck four inches into the hold; then it broke off. I saw, many
years ago, in New Bedford, the Morning Star, a whaler, with a sword
which had been driven clear through her keel, eighteen inches of
solid oak, and the point of the sword still sticking a good eight
inches beyond it.
{249}