THE STRANDED WHALE
Our fourth and last whale gave us quite a bit of trouble. We sighted this
fellow spouting in a choppy sea among ice islands two or three miles
off the edges of the polar pack. All three boats lowered for it. It was
traveling slowly in the same direction the brig was sailing and about
two miles from the vessel. It took the boats some time to work to close
quarters. When the mate's boat was almost within striking distance, the
whale went under. As frightened whales usually run against the wind, Mr.
Winchester steered to windward. But the whale had not been frightened;
it had not seen the boats. Consequently it failed to head into the wind,
but did the unexpected by coming up to leeward, blowing with evident
unconcern. This brought it nearest to Gabriel, who went after it in a
flash. After a sharp, swift run down the wind, we struck the whale, which
dived and went racing under water for the ice pack. The dizzy rate at
which it took out our line might have led us to believe it was not hurt,
but we knew it was seriously wounded by the fountains of blood it sent up
whenever it came to the surface.
The captain's signals from the brig, by this time, had headed the other
boats in our direction, but they could not reach us in time to be of any
assistance. The whale ran away with our tub of line and we sat still and
watched the red fountains that marked its course as it headed for the big
ice to the north.
Directly in the whale's course lay an ice floe about half a mile long, a
few hundred yards wide and rising from five to ten feet above the surface.
We naturally supposed the creature would dive under this and keep going
for the main pack. To our surprise we soon saw fountain after fountain,
red with blood, shooting up from the center of the floe. The whale
evidently was too badly injured to continue its flight and had sought
refuge beneath this strip of drifting ice.
[Illustration: Skin Boat of the Siberian Eskimos]
Men were hurriedly landed from all the boats with harpoons and shoulder
guns, leaving enough sailors on the thwarts to fend the boats clear of
the ice. The landing parties clambered over the broken and tumbled ice,
dragging the harpoon lines. We found the whale half exposed in a narrow
opening in the center of the floe, all the ice about it red with clotted
blood. Long John and Little Johnny threw two harpoons each into the big
body and Big Foot Louis threw his remaining one. As a result of this
bombardment, five tonite bombs exploded in the whale, which, with the
harpoons sticking all over its back, suggested a baited bull in a Spanish
bullring hung with the darts of the banderilleros. But the great animal
kept on breathing blood and would not die. After all the harpoons had been
exhausted, shoulder guns were brought into play. In all, twelve tonite
bombs were fired into it before the monster gave a mighty shiver and lay
still.
But with the whale dead, we still had a big problem on our hands. In some
way the giant bulk had to be hauled out of the ice. This was a difficult
matter even with plenty of time in which to do it. Night was coming on and
it was the brig's custom in the hours of darkness to sail far away from
the great ice pack with its edging of floating bergs and floes in order
to avoid possible accident and to sail back to the whaling grounds on
the morrow. This Captain Shorey prepared to do now. As a solution of the
dilemma, an empty bread cask or hogshead was brought on deck and the name
of the brig was seared in its staves with a hot iron in several places.
This cask was towed to the floe, hauled up on the edge of the ice, and the
long line of one of the harpoons sticking in the whale was made fast to it
by means of staples. Thus the cask marked the floe in which the whale was
lying.
It was growing dark when the brig went about, said good-night to the
whale, and headed for open water to the south. We sailed away before a
stiff breeze and soon cask and floe and the great white continent beyond
had faded from view. When morning broke we were bowling along under light
sail in a choppy sea with nothing but water to be seen in any direction.
The great ice cap was somewhere out of sight over the world's northern
rim. Not a floe, a berg, or the smallest white chunk of ice floated
anywhere in the purple sphere of sea ringed by the wide horizon. Being a
green hand, I said to myself, "Good-bye, Mr. Whale, we certainly have seen
the last we'll ever see of you."
Let me make the situation perfectly clear. Our whale was drifting
somewhere about the Arctic Ocean embedded in an ice floe scarcely to be
distinguished from a thousand other floes except by a cask upon its margin
which at a distance of a few miles would hardly be visible through strong
marine glasses. The floe, remember, was not a stationary object whose
longitude and latitude could be reckoned certainly, but was being tossed
about by the sea and driven by the winds and ocean currents. The brig,
on the other hand, had been sailing on the wind without a set course. It
had been tacking and wearing from time to time. It, too, had felt the
compulsion of the waves and currents. So throughout the night the brig
had sailed at random and twenty miles or so away the whale in its floe had
been drifting at random. Now how were we going to find our whale again?
This struck me that morning on the open sea with neither whale nor ice in
sight, as a problem certainly very nice, if not hopeless. The way it was
solved was as pretty a feat of navigation as I ever saw.
When Captain Shorey came on deck after breakfast, he "shot the sun"
through his sextant and went below to make his calculations. In a little
while he came on deck again and stepped to the man at the wheel. The
helmsman was steering full and by.
"How do you head?" asked Captain Shorey.
"Northwest," answered the sailor.
"Keep her northwest by west half west," said the captain.
For several hours the brig sailed steadily on this course. Along about
9 o'clock, we saw the peculiar, cold, light look above the sky line
ahead which meant ice and which sailors call an "ice horizon," to be
distinguished at a glance from a water horizon, which is dark. A little
later, we sighted the white loom of the great ice continent. Later still,
we picked up the bergs, floes, islands, and chunks of ice which drift
forever along its edge.
The brig kept on its course. A floe of ice, looking at a distance like a
long, narrow ribbon, lay ahead of us, apparently directly across our path.
As we drew nearer, we began to make out dimly a certain dark speck upon
the edge of the ice. This speck gradually assumed definiteness. It was our
cask and we were headed straight for it. To a landlubber unacquainted with
the mysteries of navigation, this incident may seem almost unbelievable,
but upon my honest word, it is true to the last detail.
After the brig had been laid aback near the ice, a boat was lowered and a
hole was cut in the bow of the whale's head. A cable was passed through
this and the other end was made fast aboard the ship. Then under light
sail, the brig set about the work of pulling the whale out of the ice.
The light breeze fell away and the three boats were strung out ahead with
hawsers and lent assistance with the oars. It was slow work. But when the
breeze freshened, the ice began gradually to give, then to open up, and
finally the whale was hauled clear and drawn alongside for the cutting in.