BLUBBER AND SONG
We were cruising in open water soon afterward with two whaling ships in
sight, the _Reindeer_ and the _Helen Marr_, both barkentines and carrying
five boats each, when we raised a school of bowheads straight ahead and
about five miles distant. There were twenty-five or thirty whales and a
broad patch of sea was covered with their incessant fountains. The other
ships saw them about the same time. The long-drawn, musical "Blo-o-o-w!"
from their mastheads came to us across the water. Aboard the brig, the
watch was called and all hands were mustered to the boats. Falls were
thrown off the hooks and we stood by to lower as soon as the captain gave
the word. There was equal bustle on the other ships. Traveling before a
favoring breeze in the same direction as the whales, the three vessels
waited until they could work closer. Each captain in the meanwhile kept a
watchful eye on the others. None of them proposed to let his rivals get
the start. The _Reindeer_ was to windward of us, the _Helen Marr_ on our
lee.
When the ships had reached within a mile of the whales Captain Shorey sent
our boats down. Instantly the other skippers did the same. Soon thirteen
whale boats were speeding on the chase.
Fine sailing weather it was, with a fresh breeze ruffling the surface of a
gently heaving sea. With all sails set and keeping well apart, the boats
heeled over, their crews sitting lined up along the weather gunwales.
There seemed no chance of any clash or misunderstanding. There were plenty
of whales, and with any luck there would be glory enough and profit enough
for all.
Like a line of skirmishers deployed against an enemy, the boats stole
silently toward the whales. We soon saw the great animals were busy
feeding. A few inches below the surface the sea was filled with "whale
food," a round, diaphanous, disk-like jellyfish about the size of a
silver dollar and perfectly white. When he arrived in this Arctic Ocean
whale pasture the water seemed snowy with the millions of jellyfish. With
open jaws, the whales swam this way and that, making zigzag swaths a
hundred yards long through the gelatinous masses, their great heads and
backs well out of water, their fins now and then flapping ponderously.
When they had entangled a sufficient quantity of the jellyfish in the long
hair hanging from the inner edges of their teeth they closed their mouths
with reverberating snaps that sent the water splashing out on either side.
Before the whales were aware of danger, the boats rushed in among them.
Each boatheader singled out a whale, and five boats were quickly fast--two
from the _Reindeer_, two from the _Helen Marr_, and Mr. Winchester's boat.
Wild turmoil and confusion instantly ensued among the great animals.
They went plunging below in alarm and the boats that made no strike at
the first onslaught had no chance thereafter. The whales did not stop to
investigate the causes of the sudden interruption of their banquet. The
sea swallowed them up and we did not see them again. A little later we
caught a glimpse of their fountains twinkling against the sky on the far
horizon.
Mr. Winchester's whale was wriggling about among the jellyfish with jaws
widely distended when the boat slipped silently upon it. As the prow
bumped against its black skin, Long John drove a harpoon up to the hitches
in its back. With a tonite bomb shattered in its vitals, the monster
sounded in a smother of foam. In the dynamic violence with which it got
under way it literally stood on its head. Its flukes, easily twenty feet
from tip to tip, shot at least thirty feet into the air. They swung over
to one side, the great body forming a high arch, and struck the sea with a
resounding smack. Then they sailed on high again to come down on the other
side with another broadside smash. Again they rose like lightning into the
air and the whale seemed to slip down perpendicularly into the ocean.
It was evident at the outset that the animal was badly wounded. It swam
only a short distance below the surface and not rapidly, sending up
thousands of bubbles to mark its course. This broad highway of bubbles
curved and turned, but Mr. Winchester, who had been smart enough not to
lower his sail, followed it as a hound follows the trail of a deer. The
boat sailed almost as swiftly as the whale swam and was able to keep
almost directly above it. When the whale came to the surface the mate was
upon it and Long John's second harpoon stopped it dead in its track. The
whale went through no flurry, but died instantly and rolled over on its
back.
With excitement all about, there was nothing for Mr. Landers or Gabriel to
do. So we sat still in the boats and watched the swift incidents of the
far-flung battle.
One of the whales struck by a boat from the _Reindeer_ breached almost
completely out of water as soon as it felt the sting of the harpoon. It
floundered down like a falling tower, rolled about for a moment before
sinking to a swimming depth, and made off at mad speed. It rose within
twenty feet of where our boat lay at a standstill and we could see its
wild eye, as big as a saucer, as the injured creature blew up a fountain
whose bloody spray fell all over us. The boat it was dragging soon went
flashing past us, the crew sitting crouched down and silent.
"Swing to him, fellers," shouted Kaiuli, standing up and waving his hat
about his head.
But the others paid no attention to our South Sea island savage. They were
intent just then on tragedy. Their boat struck the whale at its next rise.
The animal went into a violent flurry. It beat the sea into a lather with
fins and flukes and darted around on its side in a semi-circle, clashing
its great jaws, until it finally collapsed and lay limp and lifeless.
The whale struck by the other boat from the Reindeer ran out a tub of
line, but a second boat had come up in time to bend on its own line and
took the animal in tow. Before the whale had run out this new tub, a third
boat harpooned it. With two boats fast to it, it continued its flight to
windward and was at least two miles from us when its pursuers at last
overtook and killed it.
Two boats from the _Helen Marr_ struck whales while the monsters were
feeding within an oar's length of each other. One whale started off at
right angles to the direction taken by the other. It looked for a time
as if the two lines would become entangled and the boats would crash
together. But the whale that cut across the other's course swam above the
latter's line and dragged its boat so swiftly after it that a collision
was averted by a few feet.
One of the whales was bombed and killed after a short flight. The other
acted in a way that whales hardly ever act. It ran hard to windward at
first, as whales usually do when struck. Then it suddenly turned and ran
in an exactly opposite direction. This unexpected change in its course
almost upset the boat, which was jerked violently over on its beam-ends
and spun round like a top, while the crew held on for dear life and barely
escaped being pitched into the sea. Once righted and on its way again, the
boat rapidly hauled up on the whale, whose fast-going vitality showed in
its diminished speed. After a flight that had covered at least a mile,
the whale was finally killed close to the spot at which it had first been
struck.
When, the sharp, fast work of the boats ended, five mighty carcasses lay
stretched upon the sea. The great whale drive, which had lasted less than
an hour, had bagged game worth something like $60,000.
The three ships soon sailed to close quarters and the boats had a
comparatively easy time getting the whales alongside. That night the
try-works were started and big cressets whose flames were fed by "scrap"
flared up on all the ships, lighting them in ghostly-wise from the deck to
the topmost sail.
At the cutting in of this whale I had my first experience at the windlass.
The heaviest labor falls to the sailors who man the windlass and hoist
in the great blanket pieces of blubber and the "old head." Gabriel, the
happiest-spirited old soul aboard, bossed the job, as he always did, and
cheered the sailors and made the hard work seem like play by his constant
chanteys--those catchy, tuneful, working songs of the sea. All the old
sailors on the brig knew these songs by heart and often sang them on the
topsail halyard or while reefing on the topsail yard. The green hands
soon picked up the words and airs of the choruses and joined in. The day
laborer on land has no idea how work at sea is lightened by these songs.
Gabriel knew no end of them, and in a round, musical voice led the men
at the windlass in such rollicking old-time sea airs as "Whiskey for the
Johnnies," "Blow the Man Down," "Blow, Boys, Blow," and "Rolling Rio."
He would sing a verse and the sailors would stand with their hands on
the windlass bars until he had concluded. Then they would heave away
with a will and make the pawls clank and clatter as they roared out the
chorus. The old negro's favorite was "Whiskey for the Johnnies." It had
a fine rousing chorus and we liked to sing it not only for its stirring
melody but because we always harbored a hope--which, I may add, was never
realized--that the captain would be touched by the words and send forward
a drop of liquor with which to wet our whistles. Gabriel would begin in
this way:
"O whiskey is the life of man."
And the sailors as they heaved would chorus:
"O whiskey, O Johnny.
O whiskey is the life of man,
Whiskey for the Johnnies."
Then Gabriel would sing:
"Whiskey killed my poor old dad,
Whiskey drove my mother mad,
Whiskey caused me much abuse,
Whiskey put me in the calaboose,
Whiskey fills a man with care,
Whiskey makes a man a bear."
And the men would come through with the refrain:
"Whiskey, Johnny.
I drink whiskey when I can.
O whiskey for the Johnnies."
At the end of our song which ran through verses enough to bring a blanket
piece of blubber swinging inboard, we would look wistfully toward the
quarter-deck and wonder if the "old man" would take our musical hint.
Or Gabriel would start up "Rolling Rio":
"I'll sing you a song of the fish of the sea."
The men would thunder:
"Rolling Rio."
Gabriel would continue:
"As I was going down Broadway Street
A pretty young girl I chanced to meet."
And the sailors would sing:
"To my rolling Rio Grande.
Hurrah, you Rio, rolling Rio.
So fare you well, my pretty young girl,
I'm bound for the Rio Grande."
"Blow, Boys, Blow" was another with which we made the Arctic ring. The
other ships could not have failed to hear its swinging rhythm as it burst
from our lusty lungs in this fashion:
Gabriel:
"A Yankee ship came down the river."
The sailors:
"Blow, boys, blow."
Gabriel:
"And who do you think was skipper of her?
Dandy Jim of old Carolina."
Sailors:
"Blow, my bully boys, blow."
Gabriel:
"And who do you think was second greaser?
Why, Pompey Squash, that big buck nigger."
Sailors:
"Blow, boys, blow."
Gabriel:
"And what do you think they had for dinner?
Monkey lights and donkey's liver."
[Illustration: The Lip of a Bowhead Whale]
Sailors:
"Blow, my bully boys, blow."
Gabriel:
"And what do you think they had for supper?
Old hard tack and Yankee leather.
Then blow, my boys, for better weather.
Blow, my boys, I love to hear you."
Sailors:
"Blow, my bully boys, blow."
So with a heave and a song we soon had our whale stowed, bone and blubber,
below hatches. The _Reindeer_ and the _Helen Marr_ had drifted far away
from us by the time our work was finished, but they were still in sight
and their try-works smoking. Our whale yielded 1,800 pounds of bone.