Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustration.
See 61867-h.htm or 61867-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61867/pg61867-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61867/61867-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/deepseahuntersad00verr
THE DEEP SEA HUNTERS
* * * * * *
BY A. HYATT VERRILL
THE DEEP SEA HUNTERS
THE BOOK OF THE MOTOR BOAT
ISLES OF SPICE AND PALM
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Publishers New York
* * * * * *
[Illustration:
We’re homeward bound, may winds blow fair!
Good-bye, fare ye well!
Good-bye, fare ye well!
Wafting us true to friends, waiting there.
Hurrah, my bullies, we’re homeward bound!]
THE DEEP SEA HUNTERS
Adventures on a Whaler
by
A. HYATT VERRILL
Author of “The Real Story of the Whaler,” “Isles of
Spice and Palm,” “The Book of the Motor Boat,” etc.
D. Appleton and Company
New York : : 1922 : : London
Copyright, 1922, by D. Appleton and Company
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
I. The Boys Make a Bargain
II. Outward Bound
III. There She Blows!
IV. A Narrow Escape
V. Strange Visitors
VI. An Island Quite Out of the World
VII. How Cap’n Pem Lost His Leg
VIII. Elephant Island
IX. Spinning Yarns
X. Lost
XI. A Strange Message
XII. The Raiders
XIII. Homeward Bound
XIV. The Boys Make a Discovery
THE DEEP SEA HUNTERS
CHAPTER I
THE BOYS MAKE A BARGAIN
“Oh, Tom!” cried Jim Lathrop, as he dashed into his chum’s den, “what do
you think? They’re fitting the _Hector_ out for a cruise!”
“Come on, I don’t believe it. You can’t fool me that way,” replied Tom,
tossing aside his book. “What’s the joke? Why the old _Hector_ wouldn’t
float—she’s had grass growing out of her seams for years.”
“Honest, they are, though,” asserted Jim. “If you don’t believe it come
along and see.”
Grabbing his cap, Tom hurried out with his friend, and the two boys ran
down the shady, sleepy streets of old Fair Haven towards the water
front.
It was little wonder that Tom was incredulous of Jim’s news, for, to the
boys, the ancient whaling bark _Hector_ was as much of a fixture as the
village church or the town hall. As long as they could remember the old
ship had lain on the mud flat beside the abandoned old whaling docks,
her dingy, weather-beaten sides rising far above the rotting
stringpieces of the wharf; her spars, gray from countless storms and
years of sunshine, sagging and awry; her tattered and frayed standing
rigging slack and her deck warped and with open seams. Built nearly one
hundred years ago, the _Hector_ had for generations been the pride of
the great New Bedford whaling fleet, but, long before either of the boys
had been born, she had been towed to her resting place upon the Fair
Haven flats and abandoned to the elements.
But to the boys of the village she had been a source of never failing
amusement. Upon her decks they had played pirate, buccaneer and whaler
by turns. Within her tumble-down deck houses imaginary mutineers and
freebooters had massacred innumerable officers. From her broad, stout
crosstrees the boys had peered forth at countless treasure islands, and
within her dark and musty hold they had languished in chains or had
stowed away on imaginary voyages.
Somehow, upon the old ship, the boys seemed actually to live in the
stirring days they reacted, for old Capt’n Pem, the dock watchman, had
spent many an afternoon spinning yarns of his youthful whaling days
while seated on the heel of the _Hector’s_ bowsprit. He had related
stories of cannibal attacks, of mutinies, of boats stove in and ships
rammed by frantic whales. The boys had listened breathlessly to his
accounts of men drifting in open whaleboats for thousands of miles after
being towed out of sight of their ships by whales, and as he had served
as mate on two voyages of the _Hector_, the boys had but to close their
eyes to see the characters he described and the exciting events in which
he had taken part. Moreover, Jim, or, as his friends called him,
“Jimmy,” had found the old log of the _Hector_ in the Historical
Society’s museum across the river in New Bedford, and the boys had read
it word for word and had found it more fascinating than any book of
fiction, for they knew every inch of the old bark as they did their own
homes. They knew the very yardarm from which a mutineer had once been
hung; they could still see the holes made by the bullets of Chinese
pirates in the stout cabin door; they searched for and found the very
bunk wherein the mate had been pinned down by the spear of a Solomon
Island cannibal, and the criss-cross cuts where poor “Crazy Ned” had cut
his “baccy” on the fo’c’sle steps were still visible. Tom, too—who was
forever reading books on strange, far-away lands—had told the other boys
of the places the old ship had touched on its many cruises. He painted
vivid word pictures of the desolate Croisettes, of little-known Gough
Island and volcanic Kerguelan in the storm-lashed Antarctic. He
described the queer penguins and broad-winged albatrosses, the
palm-fringed coral isles of the tropics, the swift proas of the Malays,
the frozen wastes of the Arctic and the blistering doldrums, until he
and his friends could transport themselves at will to any part of the
world, or any spot in the seven seas, merely by clambering on to the
_Hector’s_ warped old decks and setting sail in make believe on a three
years’ cruise.
And, best of all, the boys’ parents encouraged them, for they all were
of old whaling stock and had almost as much fondness for the old
_Hector_ and the past glories of the whaling fleet as did the boys.
Moreover, the boys’ fathers were not slow to notice that, by playing
about the old bark and listening to Cap’n Pem’s yarns, the boys were
absorbing a vast amount of useful knowledge of the sea and of
seamanship, as well as of foreign lands and people. They had learned to
climb aloft, to run up the ratlines and to man the yards like real
sailors, and they acquired a full command of nautical terms, orders and
phrases. And in this old Cap’n Pem had been their instructor. He had
shown them how to knot, splice and bend ropes; he had made them repair
the rotting ratlines and footropes; he had insisted that they must be
“proper sailor men” in their play; and, in order to teach them how to
swing and square the yards, clew up the sails and otherwise “navigate”
the old hulk, he had helped them rig braces, halliards, clewlines and
other running rigging from odds and ends stowed in his cozy little home
at the head of the wharf. Under his tutelage the boys had learned how to
box the compass, how to steer, how to give orders for trimming sail, and
both Tom and Jim had gone a step farther and had learned how to “shoot
the sun” and work out latitude and longitude.
Often, the old seaman would take a part in the boys’ fun himself;
sometimes as captain, at other times as able-bodied seaman, which he
always took as a huge joke, remarking with a chuckle that, “I’ve seen a
mighty queer lot o’ timber a-callin’ o’ theirsel’s sailors; but I’ll be
stowed if I ever seen a wooden-legged A. B. afore.”
But despite his wooden leg, Cap’n Pem managed to get about as lively as
any of his young friends, and he would tail on to a brace and roar out
some deep-sea chantey with the boys joining in the chorus, with as much
vigor and heartiness as though the _Hector_ were once more plowing her
way through blue seas instead of being high and dry on a mud flat.
But neither Cap’n Pem nor the boys had ever dreamed of the _Hector_
going to sea in reality. From her opened seams, grass and weeds were
growing luxuriantly; within her hold the tide rose and fell exactly as
it did outside and, as the old salt vowed that New Bedford whalers were
built to last forever, the _Hector_ seemed doomed to be a permanent
landmark at the end of the elm-shaded street.
So, as the two boys hurried to the dock, Jim found it hard work to
convince Tom that they were about to lose their wonderful playground.
“I just went down to see if you or any of the fellows were there,”
explained Jim, “and I found a whole crowd of workmen. They had a truck
full of rope and tackle and paint and tar and everything. Some of them
were on board and others on the dock and they’d already taken off a lot
of the old rigging and were tearing the grass and stuff out of the
seams. Cap’n Pem was there too and I asked him what they were doing and
he chuckled and said, ‘Didn’t I tell ye, Jimmy, a New Bedford ship
weren’t never too old to go a-cruisin’? They’re a-fittin’ of the
_Hector_ fer a v’yge.’”
“I’ll bet he was just jollying you,” declared Tom. “Perhaps they’re
going to fix her up and take a movie of her, just as they did on the
_Viola_, you know. Perhaps that’s what Cap’n Pem meant—a movie voyage.
Why, Jimmy, the _Hector_ couldn’t go to sea.”
“Well, we’ll soon know,” replied Jim. “Look at that now! They’re taking
down her yards.”
The boys had now reached the dock, and sure enough, as Jim had said, a
crowd of laborers were busy on the wharf and on the _Hector_, and the
sound of hammers and axes, of loud orders, and the creak of tackle
blocks awoke echoes which the dock had not heard for generations.
Already nearly all the yards of the old ship had been taken down and
were laid upon the dock where men were planing and cutting them; the
grass and weeds had been removed from the cracks in the planking and men
were busy cutting and tearing out the old caulking. The ragged shrouds
were being taken off and, on a hanging stage under the bowsprit,
carpenters were working on the massive stem.
“Gosh! It does look as if you’re right,” admitted Tom, as the two boys
stopped, and with wonder, gazed upon the bustling scene. “Oh, there’s
Cap’n Pem! Let’s go and ask him all about it.”
Approaching their old friend, the boys plied him with questions.
“Sure, they’re a-fittin’ of her out fer a cruise,” he avowed, seating
himself on one of the yards. “Reckon ’iles so almighty sky high—what
with this ’ere war an’ all—that old man Nye jest couldn’t resist the
temptation o’ fittin’ out fer a cruise.”
“Where’s she goin’?” he continued in answer to the boys’ queries.
“Gosh hanged ef I know! Any seas mos’ likely. Ain’t nary one o’ the
chaps here as knows nothin’ ’bout it. Jest had orders ter overhaul the
ol’ _Hector_ an’ git her ship-shape an’ ready fer sea. Jake Potter’s
gang ’tis. Ain’t seed Jake or I’d know more erbout it.”
“But aren’t you surprised?” asked Tom. “When Jim told me, I wouldn’t
believe it. Why, it don’t seem possible. How on earth can that old hulk
float?”
“Surprised?” chuckled the old salt. “Say, son, time ye git as ol’ as I
be an’ been to sea fer a matter o’ forty year, ye won’t find nothin’ to
surprise ye. ’Sides, what’s so surprisin’ ’bout a good ship goin’ t’ sea
after a bit o’ rest? Float? Course she’ll float. Why, boys, I’ve been
a-cruisin’ fer sparm in the western ocean an’ jammed in the ice in
Behring Sea fer five years in a ship what was jes’ punk ’longside o’
this ’ere _Hector_. Float! Why, bile me down fer blubber, if she ain’t a
floatin’ long after these ’ere new-fangled, sawed-timber jimcracks o’
ships what the gov’ments a-buildin’ of has been scrapped fer a hundred
year. Why, boys, don’t ye know the ol’ _Hector_ well enough to know
she’s jes’ as sta’nch an’ sound as the day she was built? Long’s her
timbers ’re sound an’ her keel an’ garboard strake’s not rotten, she’s
all right; an’ I’ll bet my wooden leg ’gainst a chew o’ baccy thet she’s
as sound as a trivet to-day.”
“But won’t it cost more to fix her up than to build a new ship?” asked
Jim.
The old skipper shook his grizzled head. “No, sirree,” he declared.
“Ships is mighty costly these days, an’ ’sides, where ye goin’ ter find
any one thet knows how ter build a proper whale ship? Why, blow me, ye
can’t find a man what knows a blubber-hook from a fluke-chain nor a
clumsy-cleat from a scrap-hopper outside o’ New Bedford. Course she’ll
need a bit o’ tinkerin’, few new planks an’ riggin’; a bit o’ caulkin’,
and like as not, some new spars. But shucks, that ain’t much. Reckon’
they’ll have her all fine an’ dandy an’ ready fer sea inside a month.”
“But how are they going to caulk her and fix her here in the mud?”
inquired Tom. “Won’t they have to tow her over to the dry dock?”
Cap’n Pem roared with merriment.
“Bless yer heart, no!” he cried when he could control his laughter.
“Didn’t ye ever see a ship hove-down? But o’ course ye haven’t. Why,
they’ll jes clap a tackle on to her mastheads and heave her down till
they git to her bottom, easy as eatin’ pie.”
“Well, I’ll like to see that,” declared Tom. “I should think it would
pull the masts out or crack her wide open.”
“Nary a mite,” the captain assured him. “Whale ships is made fer hard
work an’ knockin’ about, not fer looks. Course there ain’t many o’ these
’ere schooners nowadays what’ll stand fer it; but ye jes wait an’ see
how the ol’ _Hector_ takes it.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Tom and Jim, in company with a number of
boy friends who joined them, stood upon the dock watching with interest,
and not without pangs of regret, the rapid dismantling of the bark.
“Reckon ’tis kind o’ hard on ye kids,” remarked Cap’n Pem, when one of
the boys expressed his sorrow at losing the old ship. “Durned if I don’t
hate ter have her go myself. Kind o’ like losin’ of an ol’ friend. Jest
hope I’ll be spared ter see her comin’ hom’ ag’in. Bet she’ll be full up
and with a shark tail on her jibboom.”
Not until the laborers knocked off work did the boys turn from the dock
towards their various homes, and by then, the _Hector_ had been stripped
bare of her rigging; huge pieces of rotten wood had been cut from her
stem; planks had been torn from sides and decks; her cabin and galley
had been ripped out; and, as Tom remarked, she looked more like a wreck
than ever.
As Jim lingered to talk with Tom before the latter’s home, Mr. Chester
drove up in his car, and instantly the two boys told him the wonderful
news of the bark.
“Yes, boys, I heard about it,”’ he replied. “Mr. Nye was in the office
to-day to see about outfitting. He’s fitting the _Hector_ out for a
voyage to the South Shetlands for sea elephant oil. Come in and have
dinner with us, Jimmy, and I’ll tell you both all about it.”
“Gosh, that’s way down by the South Pole,” exclaimed Jim as the two boys
followed Tom’s father into the house. “Say, Tom, what are sea elephants?
You never told us anything about them.”
“I don’t exactly know myself,” admitted the other. “Seems to me I did
read something about them in some book; sort of a giant seal, I think,
but I don’t understand how a whaler can go after them for oil.”
Tom’s father, however, soon explained all about sea elephants, the
gigantic seal-like creatures with trunklike noses, which dwell in the
Antarctic seas and upon the desolate islands there.
Formerly, Mr. Chester told them, the sea elephants congregated in herds
of countless thousands upon the shores of the South Shetlands,
Kerguelan, the Croisettes and other Antarctic islands, but as they were
stupid creatures and had never seen men, they fell an easy prey to
whalers who killed them for their blubber. So rapidly were they
slaughtered that they would soon have become as extinct as the Dodo or
the Great Auk, if the European governments, who owned the islands, had
not taken steps to protect them and prevent hunting them.
“Then how can the _Hector_ go after them?” asked Tom.
“Because, owing to the war, there has been such a shortage of oil that
the British government has given permission to hunt them under special
license,” replied Mr. Chester.
“Do you really think the old bark ever will get there?” asked Jim.
“I haven’t a doubt of it—unless she’s sunk by a submarine. Those old
ships were built to last forever, as Captain Pem says, and Nye’s had the
_Hector_ looked over and her timbers and most of her planking are sound.
It will be a far more difficult matter to find a crew than to get the
bark into seagoing shape.”
“Golly, wouldn’t that be a dandy cruise to take!” exclaimed Tom. “Just
think of seeing penguins and albatrosses and sea elephants and icebergs
and everything!”
“Yes, and think of really going whaling on the old _Hector_!” cried Jim.
“Sea elephanting, you mean,” laughed Tom. “Say, father, will they call
the crew ‘sea elephant men’?”
“They’ll do considerable whaling too, I expect,” laughed his father,
“and no matter what a whaleman does he’s still a whaler—even when they
went to Africa after slaves in the old days and never hunted whales.”
“Then ’twould be all the more fun—if they hunted whales, too,” declared
Tom. “Gee, I do wish we could go along. Couldn’t we go as part of the
crew or something, Dad? You always said we’d ought to go on a real
cruise, you know.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Chester. “You two boys would be a nuisance, and
besides, even if Nye would let you go, and I didn’t object, and the
captain gave his consent, your mother and Jim’s parents would be worried
to death. The ship might be sunk by a submarine, and she’ll probably be
away for a year or more and where we never could hear from her. Besides,
you’d be sick and tired of the trip before it really began. You don’t
realize what a whaling cruise is like. Go over and see Nye to-morrow and
he’ll tell you a few truths that will make you change your views about a
whaling life being a lark.”
“Well if we don’t, and Mr. Nye will let us go, and Jimmy’s folks will
let him go, and the captain will sign us on, then will you let me go?”
teased Tom.
“There are altogether too many ‘ifs’ in that,” laughed Mr. Chester, “but
I’ll make a bargain. If Nye and his skipper are fools enough to let you
two go and all the other ‘ifs’ are eliminated I’ll give my consent on
one condition, and that is, that old Captain Pem is the mate.”
“Hurrah!” cried the boys in unison.
Mr. Chester chuckled.
“I’m perfectly safe in making that bargain,” he declared. “There’s about
as much chance of a wooden-legged mate on a whaler as there is of the
_Hector_ coming back with a load of ambergris!”