TURTLES AND PORPOISES
We slipped out of Turtle bay one moonlight night and stood southward.
We were now in sperm whale waters and the crews of the whale boats were
selected. Captain Winchester was to head the starboard boat; Mr. Landers
the larboard boat; and Gabriel the waist boat. Long John was to act as
boatsteerer for Mr. Winchester, Little Johnny for Mr. Landers, and Mendez
for Gabriel. The whale boats were about twenty-five feet long, rigged with
leg-of-mutton sails and jibs. The crew of each consisted of an officer
known as a boat-header, who sat in the stern and wielded the tiller; a
boatsteerer or harpooner, whose position was in the bow; and four sailors
who pulled the stroke, midship, tub, and bow oars. Each boat had a tub
in which four hundred fathoms of whale line were coiled and carried two
harpoons and a shoulder bomb-gun. I was assigned to the midship oar of
Gabriel's boat.
Let me take occasion just here to correct a false impression quite
generally held regarding whaling. Many persons--I think, most
persons--have an idea that in modern whaling, harpoons are fired at whales
from the decks of ships. This is true only of 'long-shore whaling. In
this trade, finbacks and the less valuable varieties of whales are chased
by small steamers which fire harpoons from guns in the bows and tow the
whales they kill to factories along shore, where blubber, flesh, and
skeleton are turned into commercial products. Many published articles have
familiarized the public with this method of whaling. But whaling on the
sperm grounds of the tropics and on the right whale and bowhead grounds of
the polar seas is much the same as it has always been. Boats still go on
the backs of whales. Harpoons are thrown by hand into the great animals as
of yore. Whales still run away with the boats, pulling them with amazing
speed through walls of split water. Whales still crush boats with blows
of their mighty flukes and spill their crews into the sea.
There is just as much danger and just as much thrill and excitement in
the whaling of to-day as there was in that of a century ago. Neither
steamers nor sailing vessels that cruise for sperm and bowhead and right
whales nowadays have deck guns of any sort, but depend entirely upon the
bomb-guns attached to harpoons and upon shoulder bomb-guns wielded from
the whale boats.
In the old days, after whales had been harpooned, they were stabbed to
death with long, razor-sharp lances. The lance is a thing of the past. The
tonite bomb has taken its place as an instrument of destruction. In the
use of the tonite bomb lies the chief difference between modern whaling
and the whaling of the old school.
The modern harpoon is the same as it has been since the palmy days of the
old South Sea sperm fisheries. But fastened on its iron shaft between the
wooden handle and the spear point is a brass cylinder an inch in diameter,
perhaps, and about a foot long. This cylinder is a tonite bomb-gun.
A short piece of metal projects from the flat lower end. This is the
trigger. When the harpoon is thrown into the buttery, blubber-wrapped
body of the whale, it sinks in until the whale's skin presses the trigger
up into the gun and fires it with a tiny sound like the explosion of an
old-fashioned shotgun cap. An instant later a tonite bomb explodes with a
muffled roar in the whale's vitals.
The Arctic Ocean whaling fleet which sails out of San Francisco and
which in the year of my voyage numbered thirty vessels, makes its spring
rendezvous in the Hawaiian Islands. Most of the ships leave San Francisco
in December and reach Honolulu in March. The two or three months spent in
this leisurely voyage are known in whaler parlance as "between seasons."
On the way to the islands the ships cruise for sperm whales and sometimes
lower for finbacks, sulphur-bottoms, California grays, and even black
fish, to practice their green hand crews.
Captain Winchester did not care particularly whether he took any sperm
whales or not, though sperm oil is still valuable. The brig was not
merely a blubber-hunter. Her hold was filled with oil tanks which it was
hoped would be filled before we got back, but the chief purpose of the
voyage was the capture of right and bowhead whales--the great baleen
whales of the North.
As soon as we left Turtle Bay, a lookout for whales was posted. During
the day watches, a boatsteerer and a sailor sat on the topsail yard for
two hours at a stretch and scanned the sea for spouts. We stood down the
coast of Lower California and in a few days, were in the tide-rip which is
always running off Cape St. Lucas, where the waters of the Pacific meet a
counter-current from the Gulf of California. We rounded Cape St. Lucas and
sailed north into the gulf, having a distant view of La Paz, a little town
backed by gray mountains. Soon we turned south again, keeping close to the
Mexican coast for several days. I never learned how far south we went, but
we must have worked pretty well toward the equator, for when we stood out
across the Pacific for the Hawaiian Islands, our course was northwesterly.
I saw my first whales one morning while working in the bows with the watch
under Mr. Lander's supervision. A school of finbacks was out ahead moving
in leisurely fashion toward the brig. There were about twenty of them and
the sea was dotted with their fountains. "Blow!" breathed old man Landers
with mild interest as though to himself. "Blow!" boomed Captain Winchester
in his big bass voice from the quarter-deck. "Nothin' but finbacks, sir,"
shouted the boatsteerer from the mast-head. "All right," sang back the
captain. "Let 'em blow." It was easy for these old whalers even at this
distance to tell they were not sperm whales. Their fountains rose straight
into the air. A sperm whale's spout slants up from the water diagonally.
The whales were soon all about the ship, seemingly unafraid, still
traveling leisurely, their heads rising and falling rhythmically, and at
each rise blowing up a fountain of mist fifteen feet high. The fountains
looked like water; some water surely was mixed with them; but I was told
that the mist was the breath of the animals made visible by the colder
air. The breath came from the blow holes in a sibilant roar that resembled
no sound I had ever heard. If one can imagine a giant of fable snoring in
his sleep, one may have an idea of the sound of the mighty exhalation. The
great lungs whose gentle breathing could shoot a jet of spray fifteen feet
into the air must have had the power of enormous bellows.
Immense coal-black fellows these finbacks were--some at least sixty or
seventy feet long. One swam so close to the brig that when he blew, the
spray fell all about me, wetting my clothes like dew. The finback is a
baleen whale and a cousin of the right whale and the bowhead. Their mouths
are edged with close-set slabs of baleen, which, however, is so short that
it is worthless for commercial purposes. They are of much slenderer build
than the more valuable species of whale. Their quickness and activity make
them dangerous when hunted in the boats, but their bodies are encased in
blubber so thin that it is as worthless as their bone. Consequently they
are not hunted unless a whaling ship is hard up for oil.
We gradually worked into the trade winds that blew steadily from the
southeast. These winds stayed with us for several weeks or rather we
stayed with the winds; while in them it was rarely necessary to take in
or set a sail or brace a yard. After we had passed through these aerial
rivers, flowing through definite, if invisible, banks, we struck the
doldrums--areas of calm between wind currents--they might be called
whirlpools of stillness. Later in the day light, fitful breezes finally
pushed us through them into the region of winds again.
The slow voyage to the Hawaiian islands--on the sperm whale grounds, we
cruised under short sail--might have proved monotonous if we had not been
kept constantly busy and if diverting incidents had not occurred almost
every day. Once we sighted three immense turtles sunning themselves on
the sea. To the captain they held out prospect of soups and delicate
dishes for the cabin table, and with Long John as boatsteerer, a boat was
lowered for them. I expected it would be difficult to get within darting
distance. What was my surprise to see the turtles, with heads in the air
and perfectly aware of their danger, remain upon the surface until the
boat was directly upon them. The fact was they could not go under quickly;
the big shells kept them afloat. Long John dropped his harpoon crashing
through the shell of one of the turtles, flopped it into the boat, and
then went on without particular hurry, and captured the other two in the
same way. The cabin feasted for several days on the delicate flesh of the
turtles; the forecastle got only a savory smell from the galley, as was
usual.
We ran into a school of porpoises on another occasion--hundreds of them
rolling and tumbling about the ship, like fat porkers on a frolic. Little
Johnny took a position on the forecastle head with a harpoon, the line
from which had been made fast to the fore-bitt. As a porpoise rose beneath
him, he darted his harpoon straight into its back. The sea pig went
wriggling under, leaving the water dyed with its blood. It was hauled
aboard, squirming and twisting. Little Johnny harpooned two more before
the school took fright and disappeared. The porpoises were cleaned and
some of their meat, nicely roasted, was sent to the forecastle. It made
fine eating, tasting something like beef.
The steward was an inveterate fisherman and constantly kept a baited hook
trailing in the brig's wake, the line tied to the taff-rail. He caught
a great many bonitos and one day landed a dolphin. We had seen many of
these beautiful fish swimming about the ship--long, graceful and looking
like an animate streak of blue sky. The steward's dolphin was about five
feet long. I had often seen in print the statement that dolphins turned
all colors of the rainbow in dying and I had as often seen the assertion
branded as a mere figment of poetic imagination. Our dolphin proved the
truth of the poetic tradition. As life departed, it changed from blue to
green, bronze, salmon, gold, and gray, making death as beautiful as a
gorgeous kaleidoscope.
We saw flying fish every day--great "coveys" of them, one may say. They
frequently flew several hundred yards, fluttering their webbed side fins
like the wings of a bird, sometimes rising fifteen to twenty feet above
the water, and curving and zigzagging in their flight. More than once they
flew directly across the ship and several fell on deck. I was talking with
Kaiuli, the Kanaka, one night when we heard a soft little thud on deck. I
should have paid no attention but Kaiuli was alert on the instant. "Flying
feesh," he cried zestfully and rushed off to search the deck. He found
the fish and ate it raw, smacking his lips over it with great gusto. The
Hawaiian islanders, he told me, esteem raw flying fish a great delicacy.
I never saw water so "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue" as in the
middle of the Pacific where we had some four miles of water under us.
It was as blue as indigo. At night, the sea seemed afire with riotous
phosphorescence. White flames leaped about the bows where the brig cut
the water before a fresh breeze; the wake was a broad, glowing path. When
white caps were running every wave broke in sparks and tongues of flame,
and the ocean presented the appearance of a prairie swept by fire. A big
shark came swimming about the ship one night and it shone like a living
incandescence--a silent, ghost-like shape slowly gliding under the brig
and out again.
The idle night watches in the tropics were great times for story telling.
The deep-water sailors were especially fond of this way of passing the
time. While the green hands were engaging in desultory talk and wishing
for the bell to strike to go back to their bunks, these deep-water fellows
would be pacing up and down or sitting on deck against the bulwarks,
smoking their pipes and spinning yarns to each other. The stories as a
rule were interminable and were full of "Then he says" and "Then the other
fellow says." It was a poor story that did not last out a four-hour watch
and many of them were regular "continued in our next" serials, being cut
short at the end of one watch to be resumed in the next.
No matter how long-winded or prosy the narrative, the story teller was
always sure of an audience whose attention never flagged for an instant.
The boyish delight of these full-grown men in stories amazed me. I had
never seen anything like it. Once in a while a tale was told that was
worth listening to, but most of them were monotonously uninteresting. They
bored me.