savage monsters did not content themselves with what was thrown away;
they were so bold as to come before our faces and take bites out of the
whale's body. Some of these sharks were eight and nine feet long, and
when I saw them open their horrid jaws, armed with three rows of
glistening white sharp teeth, I could well understand how easily they
could bite off the leg of a man, as they often do when they get the
chance. Sometimes they would come right up on the whale's body with a
wave, bite out great pieces of the flesh, turn over on their bellies,
and roll off.
While I was looking over the side during the early part of that day, I
saw a very large shark come rolling up in this way close to Tom Lokins'
legs. Tom made a cut at him with his blubber-spade, but the shark
rolled off in time to escape the blow. And after all it would not have
done him much damage, for it is not easy to frighten or take the life
out of a shark.
"Hand me an iron and line, Bob," said Tom, looking up at me. "I've got
a spite agin that feller. He's been up twice already. Ah! hand it down
here, and two or three of ye stand by to hold on by the line. There he
comes, the big villain!"
The shark came close to the side of the whale at that moment, and Tom
sent the harpoon right down his throat.
"Hold on hard," shouted Tom.
"Ay, ay," replied several of the men as they held on to the line, their
arms jerking violently as the savage fish tried to free itself. We
quickly reeved a line through a block at the fore yard-arm, and hauled
it on deck with much difficulty. The scene that followed was very
horrible, for there was no killing the brute. It threshed the deck with
its tail, and snapped so fiercely with its tremendous jaws, that we had
to keep a sharp look out lest it should catch hold of a leg. At last
its tail was cut off, the body cut open, and all the entrails taken out,
yet even after this it continued to flap and thresh about the deck for
some time, and the heart continued to contract for twenty minutes after
it was taken out and pierced with a knife.
I would not have believed this had I not seen it with my own eyes. In
case some of my readers may doubt its truth, I would remind them how
difficult it is, to kill some of those creatures, with which we are all
familiar. The common worm, for instance, may be cut into a number of
small pieces, and yet each piece remains alive for some time after.
The skin of the shark is valued by the whalemen, because, when cleaned
and dry, it is as good as sand-paper, and is much used in polishing the
various things they make, out of whales' bones and teeth.
When the last piece of blubber had been cut off our whale, the great
chain that held it to the ship's side was cast off, and the now useless
carcass sank like a stone, much to the sorrow of some of the smaller
birds, which, having been driven away by their bigger comrades, had not
fed so heartily as they wished, perhaps! But what was loss to the gulls
was gain to the sharks, which could follow the carcass down into the
deep and devour it at their leisure.
"Now, lads," cried the mate, when the remains had vanished, "rouse up
the fires, look alive, my hearties!"
"Ay, ay, sir," was the ready reply, cheerfully given, as every man
sprang to his appointed duty.
And so, having "cut in" our whale, we next proceeded to "try out" the
oil.
CHAPTER FIVE.
A STORM, A MAN OVERBOARD, AND A RESCUE.
The scenes in a whaleman's life are varied and very stirring. Sometimes
he is floating on the calm ocean, idling about the deck and whistling
for a breeze, when all of a sudden the loud cry is heard, "There she
blows!" and in a moment the boats are in the water, and he is engaged in
all the toils of an exciting chase. Then comes the battle with the
great leviathan of the deep, with all its risks and dangers. Sometimes
he is unfortunate, the decks are clean, he has nothing to do. At other
times he is lucky, "cutting-in" and "trying out" engage all his energies
and attention. Frequently storms toss him on the angry deep, and show
him, if he will but learn the lesson, how helpless a creature he is, and
how thoroughly dependent at all times for life, safety, and success,
upon the arm of God.
"Trying out" the oil, although not so thrilling a scene as many a one in
his career, is, nevertheless, extremely interesting, especially at
night, when the glare of the fires in the try-works casts a deep red
glow on the faces of the men, on the masts and sails, and even out upon
the sea.
The try-works consisted of two huge melting-pots fixed upon brick-work
fireplaces between the fore and main masts. While some of the men were
down in the blubber-room cutting the "blanket-pieces," as the largest
masses are called, others were pitching the smaller pieces on deck,
where they were seized by two men who stood near a block of wood, called
a "horse," with a mincing knife, to slash the junks so as to make them
melt easily. These were then thrown into the melting-pots by one of the
mates, who kept feeding the fires with such "scraps" of blubber as
remain after the oil is taken out. Once the fires were fairly set
agoing no other kind of fuel was required than "scraps" of blubber. As
the boiling oil rose it was baled into copper cooling-tanks. It was the
duty of two other men to dip it out of these tanks into casks, which
were then headed up by our cooper, and stowed away in the hold.
As the night advanced the fires became redder and brighter by contrast,
the light shone and glittered on the decks, and, as we plied our dirty
work, I could not help thinking, "what _would_ my mother say, if she
could get a peep at me now?"
The ship's crew worked and slept by watches, for the fires were not
allowed to go out all night. About midnight I sat down on the windlass
to take a short rest, and began talking to one of the men, Fred Borders
by name. He was one of the quietest and most active men in the ship,
and, being quite a young man, not more than nineteen, he and I drew to
one another, and became very intimate.
"I think we're goin' to have a breeze, Bob," said he, as a sharp puff of
wind crossed the deck, driving the black smoke to leeward, and making
the fire flare up in the try-works.
"I hope it won't be a storm, then," said I, "for it will oblige us to
put out the fires."
Just then Tom Lokins came up, ordered Fred to go and attend to the
fires, sat down opposite to me on the windlass, and began to "lay down
the law" in regard to storms.
"You see, Bob Ledbury," said he, beginning to fill his pipe, "young
fellers like you don't know nothin' about the weather--'cause why?
you've got no experience. Now, I'll put you up to a dodge consarning
this very thing."
I never found out what was the dodge that Tom, in his wisdom, was to
have put me up to, for at that moment the captain came on deck, and gave
orders to furl the top-gallant sails.
Three or four of us ran up the rigging like monkeys, and in a few
minutes the sails were lashed to the yards.
The wind now began to blow steadily from the nor'-west; but not so hard
as to stop our try-works for more than an hour. After that it blew
stiff enough to raise a heavy sea, and we were compelled to slack the
fires. This was all the harm it did to us, however, for although the
breeze was stiffish, it was nothing like a gale.
As the captain and the first mate walked the quarter-deck together, I
heard the former say to the latter, "I think we had as well take in a
reef in the topsails. All hereabouts the fishing-ground is good, we
don't need to carry on."
The order was given to reduce sail, and the men lay out on the topsail
yards. I noticed that my friend Fred Borders was the first man to
spring up the shrouds and lay out on the main-top-sail yard. It was so
dark that I could scarcely see the masts. While I was gazing up, I
thought I observed a dark object drop from the yard; at the same moment
there was a loud shriek, followed by a plunge in the sea. This was
succeeded by the sudden cry, "man overboard!" and instantly the whole
ship was in an uproar.
No one who has not heard that cry can understand the dreadful feelings
that are raised in the human breast by it. My heart at first seemed to
leap into my mouth, and almost choke me. Then a terrible fear, which I
cannot describe, shot through me, when I thought it might be my comrade
Fred Borders. But these thoughts and feelings passed like lightning--in
a far shorter time than it takes to write them down. The shriek was
still ringing in my ears, when the captain roared--
"Down your helm! stand by to lower away the boats."
At the same moment he seized a light hen-coop and tossed it overboard,
and the mate did the same with an oar in the twinkling of an eye.
Almost without knowing what I did, or why I did it, I seized a great
mass of oakum and rubbish that lay on the deck saturated with oil, I
thrust it into the embers of the fire in the try-works and hurled it
blazing into the sea.
The ship's head was thrown into the wind, and we were brought to as
quickly as possible. A gleam of hope arose within me on observing that
the mass I had thrown overboard continued still to burn; but when I saw
how quickly it went astern, notwithstanding our vigorous efforts to stop
the ship, my heart began to sink, and when, a few moments after, the
light suddenly disappeared, despair seized upon me, and I gave my friend
up for lost.
At that moment, strange to say, thoughts of my mother came into my mind,
but there was no time to be lost, and I threw myself, with a good deal
of energy, into the first boat that was lowered, and pulled at the oar
as if my own life depended on it.
A lantern had been fastened to the end of an oar and set up in the boat,
and by its faint light I could see that the men looked very grave. Tom
Lokins was steering, and I sat near him, pulling the aft oar.
"Do you think we've any chance, Tom?" said I.
A shake of the head was his only reply.
"It must have been here away," said the mate, who stood up in the bow
with a coil of rope at his feet, and a boat-hook in his hand. "Hold on,
lads, did any one hear a cry?"
No one answered. We all ceased pulling, and listened intently; but the
noise of the waves and the whistling of the winds were all the sounds we
heard.
"What's that floating on the water?" said one of the men, suddenly.
"Where away?" cried every one eagerly.
"Right off the lee-bow--there, don't you see it?"
At that moment a faint cry came floating over the black water, and died
away in the breeze.
The single word "Hurrah!" burst from our throats with all the power of
our lungs, and we bent to our oars till we well-nigh tore the rollocks
out of the boat.
"Hold hard! stern all!" roared the mate, as we went flying down to
leeward, and almost ran over the hen-coop, to which a human form was
seen to be clinging with the tenacity of a drowning man. We had swept
down so quickly that we shot past it. In an agony of fear lest my
friend should be again lost in the darkness, I leaped up and sprang into
the sea. Tom Lokins, however, had noticed what I was about; he seized
me by the collar of my jacket, just as I reached the water, and held me
with a grip like a vice till one of the men came to his assistance, and
dragged me back into the boat. In a few moments more we reached the
hen-coop, and Fred was saved!
He was half dead with cold and exhaustion, poor fellow, but in a few
minutes he began to recover, and before we reached the ship he could
speak. His first words were to thank God for his deliverance. Then he
added--
"And, thanks to the man that flung that light overboard. I should have
gone down but for that. It showed me where the hen-coop was."
I cannot describe the feeling of joy that filled my heart when he said
this.
"Ay, who wos it that throw'd that fire overboard?" inquired one of the
men.
"Don't know," replied another, "I think it wos the cap'n."
"You'll find that out when we get aboard," cried the mate; "pull away,
lads."
In five minutes Fred Borders was passed up the side and taken down
below. In two minutes more we had him stripped naked, rubbed dry,
wrapped in hot blankets, and set down on one of the lockers, with a hot
brick at his feet.
CHAPTER SIX.
THE WHALE--FIGHTING BULLS, ETCETERA.
As the reader may, perhaps, have been asking a few questions about the
whale in his own mind, I shall try to answer them, by telling a few
things concerning that creature which, I think, are worth knowing.
In the first place, the whale is not a fish! I have applied that name
to it, no doubt, because it is the custom to do so; but there are great
differences between the whales and the fishes. The mere fact that the
whale lives in water is not sufficient to prove it to be a fish. The
frog lives very much in water--he is born in the water, and, when very
young, he lives in it altogether--would die, in fact, if he were taken
out of it; yet a frog is not a fish.
The following are some of the differences existing between a whale and a
fish:--
The whale is a warm-blooded animal; the fish is cold-blooded. The whale
brings forth its young alive; while most fishes lay eggs or spawn.
Moreover, the fish lives entirely under water, but the whale cannot do
so. He breathes air through enormous lungs, not gills. If you were to
hold a whale's head under water for much longer than an hour, it would
certainly be drowned; and this is the reason why it comes so frequently
to the surface of the sea to take breath. Whales seldom stay more than
an hour under water, and when they come up to breathe, they discharge
the last breath they took through their nostrils or blow-holes, mixed
with large quantities of water, which they have taken in while feeding.
But the most remarkable point of difference between the whale and fishes
of all kinds is, that it suckles its young.
The calf of one kind of whale is about fourteen feet long when it is
born, and it weighs about a ton. The cow-whale usually has only one
calf at a time, and the manner in which she behaves to her gigantic baby
shows that she is affected by feelings of anxiety and affection such as
are never seen in fishes, which heartless creatures forsake their eggs
when they are laid, and I am pretty sure they would not know their own
children if they happened to meet with them.
The whale, on the contrary, takes care of her little one, gives it suck,
and sports playfully with it in the waves; its enormous heart throbbing
all the while, no doubt, with satisfaction.
I have heard of a whale which was once driven into shoal water with its
calf and nearly stranded. The huge dam seemed to become anxious for the
safety of her child, for she was seen to swim eagerly round it, embrace
it with her fins, and roll it over in the waves, trying to make it
follow her into deep water. But the calf was obstinate; it would not
go, and the result was that the boat of a whaler pulled up and harpooned
it. The poor little whale darted away like lightning on receiving the
terrible iron, and ran out a hundred fathoms of line; but it was soon
overhauled and killed. All this time the dam kept close to the side of
its calf, and not until a harpoon was plunged into her own side would
she move away. Two boats were after her. With a single rap of her tail
she cut one of the boats in two, and then darted off. But in a short
time she turned and came back. Her feelings of anxiety had returned, no
doubt, after the first sting of pain was over, and she died at last,
close to the side of her young one.
There are various kinds of whales, but the two sorts that are most
sought after are the common whale of the Greenland Seas, which is called
the "right whale," and the sperm whale of the South Sea. Both kinds are
found in the south; but the sperm whale never goes to the North Seas.
Both kinds grow to an enormous size--sometimes to seventy feet in
length, but there is considerable difference in their appearance,
especially about the head. In a former chapter I have partly described
the head of a _right_ whale, which has whalebone instead of teeth, with
its blow-holes on the back of the head. The sperm whale has large white
teeth in its lower-jaw and none at all in the upper. It has only one
blow-hole, and that a little one, much farther forward on its head, so
that sailors can tell, at a great distance, what kind of whales they
see, simply by their manner of spouting.
The most remarkable feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of
its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn
square off, and this head is about one-third of its entire body.
The sperm whale feeds differently from the right whale. He seizes his
prey with his powerful teeth, and lives, to a great extent, on large
cuttlefish. Some of them have been seen to vomit lumps of these
cuttlefish as long as a whale-boat. He is much fiercer, too, than the
right whale, which almost always takes to flight when struck, but the
sperm whale will sometimes turn on its foes, and smash their boat with a
blow of his blunt head or tail.
Fighting-whales, as they are called, are not uncommon. These are
generally old bulls, which have become wise from experience, and give
the whalers great trouble--sometimes carrying away several harpoons and
lines. The lower-jaw of one old bull of this kind was found to be
sixteen feet long, and it had forty-eight teeth, some of them a foot
long. A number of scars about his head showed that this fellow had been
in the wars. When two bull-whales take to fighting, their great effort
is to catch each other by the lower-jaw, and, when locked together, they
struggle with a degree of fury that cannot be described.
It is not often that the sperm whale actually attacks a ship; but there
are a few cases of this kind which cannot be doubted. The following
story is certainly true; and while it shows how powerful a creature the
whale is, it also shows what terrible risk and sufferings the whaleman
has frequently to encounter.
In the month of August 1819, the American whale-ship _Essex_ sailed from
Nantucket for the Pacific Ocean. She was commanded by Captain Pollard.
Late in the autumn of the same year, when in latitude 40 degrees of the
South Pacific, a shoal, or "school," of sperm whales was discovered, and
three boats were immediately lowered and sent in pursuit. The mate's
boat was struck by one of the fish during the chase, and it was found
necessary to return to the ship to repair damages.
While the men were employed at this, an enormous whale suddenly rose
quite close to the ship. He was going at nearly the same rate with the
ship--about three miles an hour; and the men, who were good judges of
the size of whales, thought that it could not have been less than
eighty-five feet long. All at once he ran against the ship, striking
her bows, and causing her to tremble like a leaf. The whale immediately
dived and passed under the ship, and grazed her keel in doing so. This
evidently hurt his back, for he suddenly rose to the surface about fifty
yards off, and commenced lashing the sea with his tail and fins as if
suffering great agony. It was truly an awful sight to behold that great
monster lashing the sea into foam at so short a distance.
In a short time he seemed to recover, and started off at great speed to
windward. Meanwhile the men discovered that the blow received by the
ship had done her so much damage, that she began to fill and settle down
at the bows; so they rigged the pumps as quickly as possible. While
working them one of the men cried out--
"God have mercy! he comes again!"
This was too true. The whale had turned, and was now bearing down on
them at full speed, leaving a white track of foam behind him. Rushing
at the ship like a battering-ram, he hit her fair on the weather bow,
and stove it in, after which he dived and disappeared. The horrified
men took to their boats at once, and in _ten minutes_ the ship went
down.
The condition of the men thus left in three open boats far out upon the
sea, without provisions or shelter, was terrible indeed. Some of them
perished, and the rest, after suffering the severest hardships, reached
a low island called Ducies, on the 20th of December. It was a mere
sand-bank, which supplied them only with water and seafowl. Still even
this was a mercy, for which they had reason to thank God; for in cases
of this kind one of the evils that seamen have most cause to dread is
the want of water.
Three of the men resolved to remain on this sand-bank, for dreary and
uninhabited though it was, they preferred to take their chance of being
picked up by a passing ship rather than run the risks of crossing the
wide ocean in open boats, so their companions bade them a sorrowful
farewell, and left them. But this island is far out of the usual track
of ships. The poor fellows have never since been heard of.
It was the 27th of December when the three boats left the sand-bank with
the remainder of the men, and began a voyage of two thousand miles,
towards the island of Juan Fernandez. The mate's boat was picked up,
about three months after, by the ship _Indian_ of London, with only
three living men in it. About the same time the captain's boat was
discovered, by the _Dauphin_ of Nantucket, with only two men living; and
these unhappy beings had only sustained life by feeding on the flesh of
their dead comrades. The third boat must have been lost, for it was
never heard of; and out of the whole crew of twenty men, only five
returned home to tell their eventful story.
Before resuming the thread of my narrative, I must not omit to mention,
that in the head of the sperm whale there is a large cavity or hole
called the "case," which contains pure oil that does not require to be
melted, but can be bailed at once into casks and stowed away. This is
the valuable spermaceti from which the finest candles are made. One
whale will sometimes yield fifteen barrels of spermaceti oil from the
"case" of its head. A large fish will produce from eighty to a
hundred-barrels of oil altogether, sometimes much more; and when
whalemen converse with each other, about the size of whales, they speak
of "eighty-barrel fish," and so on.
Although I have written much about the fighting powers of the sperm
whale, it must not be supposed that whales are by nature fond of
fighting. On the contrary, the "right" whale is a timid creature, and
never shows fight, except in defence of its young. And the sperm whale
generally takes to flight when pursued. In fact, most of the accidents
that happen to whalemen occur when the wounded monster is lashing the
water in blind terror and agony.
The whale has three bitter enemies, much smaller, but much bolder than
himself, and of these he is terribly afraid. They are the swordfish,
the thrasher, and the killer. The first of these, the swordfish, has a
strong straight horn or sword projecting from his snout, with which he
boldly attacks and pierces the whale. The thrasher is a strong fish,
twenty feet long, and of great weight. Its method of attack is to leap
out of the water on the whale's back, and deal it a tremendous blow with
its powerful tail.
The swordfish and thrasher sometimes act together in the attack; the
first stabbing him below, and the second belabouring him above, while
the whale, unable, or too frightened, to fight, rushes through the
water, and even leaps its whole gigantic length into the air in its
endeavours to escape. When a whale thus leaps his whole length out of
the water, the sailors say he "breaches," and breaching is a common
practice. They seem to do it often for amusement as well as from
terror.
But the most deadly of the three enemies is the killer. This is itself
a kind of small whale, but it is wonderfully strong, swift, and bold.
When one of the killers gets into the middle, of a school of whales, the
frightened creatures are seen flying in all directions. His mode of
attack is to seize his big enemy by the jaw, and hold on until he is
exhausted and dies.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
TOM'S WISDOM--ANOTHER GREAT BATTLE.
One day I was standing beside the windlass, listening to the
conversation of five or six of the men, who were busy sharpening
harpoons and cutting-knives, or making all kinds of toys and things out
of whales' bones. We had just finished cutting-in and trying out our
third whale, and as it was not long since we reached the fishing-ground,
we were in high hopes of making a good thing of it that season; so that
every one was in good spirits, from the captain down to the youngest man
in the ship.