At Random!
FOR SOME WHILE the voyage of the Abraham Lincoln was marked by no
incident. But one circumstance arose that displayed Ned Land’s
marvelous skills and showed just how much confidence we could place in
him.
Off the Falkland Islands on June 30, the frigate came in contact with
a fleet of American whalers, and we learned that they hadn’t seen the
narwhale. But one of them, the captain of the Monroe, knew that Ned
Land had shipped aboard the Abraham Lincoln and asked his help in
hunting a baleen whale that was in sight. Anxious to see Ned Land at
work, Commander Farragut authorized him to make his way aboard the
Monroe. And the Canadian had such good luck that with a right-and-left
shot, he harpooned not one whale but two, striking the first straight
to the heart and catching the other after a few minutes’ chase!
Assuredly, if the monster ever had to deal with Ned Land’s harpoon, I
wouldn’t bet on the monster.
The frigate sailed along the east coast of South America with
prodigious speed. By July 3 we were at the entrance to the Strait of
Magellan, abreast of Cabo de las Virgenes. But Commander Farragut was
unwilling to attempt this tortuous passageway and maneuvered instead
to double Cape Horn.
The crew sided with him unanimously. Indeed, were we likely to
encounter the narwhale in such a cramped strait? Many of our sailors
swore that the monster couldn’t negotiate this passageway simply
because “he’s too big for it!”
Near three o’clock in the afternoon on July 6, fifteen miles south of
shore, the Abraham Lincoln doubled that solitary islet at the tip of
the South American continent, that stray rock Dutch seamen had named
Cape Horn after their hometown of Hoorn. Our course was set for the
northwest, and the next day our frigate’s propeller finally churned
the waters of the Pacific.
“Open your eyes! Open your eyes!” repeated the sailors of the Abraham
Lincoln.
And they opened amazingly wide. Eyes and spyglasses (a bit dazzled, it
is true, by the vista of $2,000.00) didn’t remain at rest for an
instant. Day and night we observed the surface of the ocean, and those
with nyctalopic eyes, whose ability to see in the dark increased their
chances by fifty percent, had an excellent shot at winning the prize.
As for me, I was hardly drawn by the lure of money and yet was far
from the least attentive on board. Snatching only a few minutes for
meals and a few hours for sleep, come rain or come shine, I no longer
left the ship’s deck. Sometimes bending over the forecastle railings,
sometimes leaning against the sternrail, I eagerly scoured that
cotton-colored wake that whitened the ocean as far as the eye could
see! And how many times I shared the excitement of general staff and
crew when some unpredictable whale lifted its blackish back above the
waves. In an instant the frigate’s deck would become densely
populated. The cowls over the companionways would vomit a torrent of
sailors and officers. With panting chests and anxious eyes, we each
would observe the cetacean’s movements. I stared; I stared until I
nearly went blind from a worn-out retina, while Conseil, as stoic as
ever, kept repeating to me in a calm tone:
“If master’s eyes would kindly stop bulging, master will see farther!”
But what a waste of energy! The Abraham Lincoln would change course
and race after the animal sighted, only to find an ordinary baleen
whale or a common sperm whale that soon disappeared amid a chorus of
curses!
However, the weather held good. Our voyage was proceeding under the
most favorable conditions. By then it was the bad season in these
southernmost regions, because July in this zone corresponds to our
January in Europe; but the sea remained smooth and easily visible over
a vast perimeter.
Ned Land still kept up the most tenacious skepticism; beyond his
spells on watch, he pretended that he never even looked at the surface
of the waves, at least while no whales were in sight. And yet the
marvelous power of his vision could have performed yeoman service. But
this stubborn Canadian spent eight hours out of every twelve reading
or sleeping in his cabin. A hundred times I chided him for his
unconcern.
“Bah!” he replied. “Nothing’s out there, Professor Aronnax, and if
there is some animal, what chance would we have of spotting it? Can’t
you see we’re just wandering around at random? People say they’ve
sighted this slippery beast again in the Pacific high seas—I’m truly
willing to believe it, but two months have already gone by since then,
and judging by your narwhale’s personality, it hates growing moldy
from hanging out too long in the same waterways! It’s blessed with a
terrific gift for getting around. Now, professor, you know even better
than I that nature doesn’t violate good sense, and she wouldn’t give
some naturally slow animal the ability to move swiftly if it hadn’t a
need to use that talent. So if the beast does exist, it’s already long
gone!”
I had no reply to this. Obviously we were just groping blindly. But
how else could we go about it? All the same, our chances were
automatically pretty limited. Yet everyone still felt confident of
success, and not a sailor on board would have bet against the narwhale
appearing, and soon.
On July 20 we cut the Tropic of Capricorn at longitude 105 degrees,
and by the 27th of the same month, we had cleared the equator on the
110th meridian. These bearings determined, the frigate took a more
decisive westward heading and tackled the seas of the central
Pacific. Commander Farragut felt, and with good reason, that it was
best to stay in deep waters and keep his distance from continents or
islands, whose neighborhoods the animal always seemed to avoid—“No
doubt,” our bosun said, “because there isn’t enough water for him!” So
the frigate kept well out when passing the Tuamotu, Marquesas, and
Hawaiian Islands, then cut the Tropic of Cancer at longitude 132
degrees and headed for the seas of China.
We were finally in the area of the monster’s latest antics! And in all
honesty, shipboard conditions became life-threatening. Hearts were
pounding hideously, gearing up for futures full of incurable
aneurysms. The entire crew suffered from a nervous excitement that
it’s beyond me to describe. Nobody ate, nobody slept. Twenty times a
day some error in perception, or the optical illusions of some sailor
perched in the crosstrees, would cause intolerable anguish, and this
emotion, repeated twenty times over, kept us in a state of
irritability so intense that a reaction was bound to follow.
And this reaction wasn’t long in coming. For three months, during
which each day seemed like a century, the Abraham Lincoln plowed all
the northerly seas of the Pacific, racing after whales sighted,
abruptly veering off course, swerving sharply from one tack to
another, stopping suddenly, putting on steam and reversing engines in
quick succession, at the risk of stripping its gears, and it didn’t
leave a single point unexplored from the beaches of Japan to the
coasts of America. And we found nothing! Nothing except an immenseness
of deserted waves! Nothing remotely resembling a gigantic narwhale, or
an underwater islet, or a derelict shipwreck, or a runaway reef, or
anything the least bit unearthly!
So the reaction set in. At first, discouragement took hold of people’s
minds, opening the door to disbelief. A new feeling appeared on board,
made up of three-tenths shame and seven-tenths fury. The crew called
themselves “out-and-out fools” for being hoodwinked by a fairy tale,
then grew steadily more furious! The mountains of arguments amassed
over a year collapsed all at once, and each man now wanted only to
catch up on his eating and sleeping, to make up for the time he had so
stupidly sacrificed.
With typical human fickleness, they jumped from one extreme to the
other. Inevitably, the most enthusiastic supporters of the undertaking
became its most energetic opponents. This reaction mounted upward from
the bowels of the ship, from the quarters of the bunker hands to the
messroom of the general staff; and for certain, if it hadn’t been for
Commander Farragut’s characteristic stubbornness, the frigate would
ultimately have put back to that cape in the south.
But this futile search couldn’t drag on much longer. The Abraham
Lincoln had done everything it could to succeed and had no reason to
blame itself. Never had the crew of an American naval craft shown more
patience and zeal; they weren’t responsible for this failure; there
was nothing to do but go home.
A request to this effect was presented to the commander. The commander
stood his ground. His sailors couldn’t hide their discontent, and
their work suffered because of it. I’m unwilling to say that there was
mutiny on board, but after a reasonable period of intransigence,
Commander Farragut, like Christopher Columbus before him, asked for a
grace period of just three days more. After this three-day delay, if
the monster hadn’t appeared, our helmsman would give three turns of
the wheel, and the Abraham Lincoln would chart a course toward
European seas.
This promise was given on November 2. It had the immediate effect of
reviving the crew’s failing spirits. The ocean was observed with
renewed care. Each man wanted one last look with which to sum up his
experience. Spyglasses functioned with feverish energy. A supreme
challenge had been issued to the giant narwhale, and the latter had no
acceptable excuse for ignoring this Summons to Appear!
Two days passed. The Abraham Lincoln stayed at half steam. On the
offchance that the animal might be found in these waterways, a
thousand methods were used to spark its interest or rouse it from its
apathy. Enormous sides of bacon were trailed in our wake, to the great
satisfaction, I must say, of assorted sharks. While the Abraham
Lincoln heaved to, its longboats radiated in every direction around it
and didn’t leave a single point of the sea unexplored. But the evening
of November 4 arrived with this underwater mystery still unsolved.
At noon the next day, November 5, the agreed-upon delay expired. After
a position fix, true to his promise, Commander Farragut would have to
set his course for the southeast and leave the northerly regions of
the Pacific decisively behind.
By then the frigate lay in latitude 31 degrees 15′ north and longitude
136 degrees 42′ east. The shores of Japan were less than 200 miles to
our leeward. Night was coming on. Eight o’clock had just struck. Huge
clouds covered the moon’s disk, then in its first quarter. The sea
undulated placidly beneath the frigate’s stempost.
Just then I was in the bow, leaning over the starboard rail. Conseil,
stationed beside me, stared straight ahead. Roosting in the shrouds,
the crew examined the horizon, which shrank and darkened little by
little. Officers were probing the increasing gloom with their night
glasses. Sometimes the murky ocean sparkled beneath moonbeams that
darted between the fringes of two clouds. Then all traces of light
vanished into the darkness.
Observing Conseil, I discovered that, just barely, the gallant lad had
fallen under the general influence. At least so I thought. Perhaps his
nerves were twitching with curiosity for the first time in history.
“Come on, Conseil!” I told him. “Here’s your last chance to pocket
that $2,000.00!”
“If master will permit my saying so,” Conseil replied, “I never
expected to win that prize, and the Union government could have
promised $100,000.00 and been none the poorer.”
“You’re right, Conseil, it turned out to be a foolish business after
all, and we jumped into it too hastily. What a waste of time, what a
futile expense of emotion! Six months ago we could have been back in
France—”
“In master’s little apartment,” Conseil answered. “In master’s museum!
And by now I would have classified master’s fossils. And master’s
babirusa would be ensconced in its cage at the zoo in the Botanical
Gardens, and it would have attracted every curiosity seeker in town!”
“Quite so, Conseil, and what’s more, I imagine that people will soon
be poking fun at us!”
“To be sure,” Conseil replied serenely, “I do think they’ll have fun
at master’s expense. And must it be said . . . ?”
“It must be said, Conseil.”
“Well then, it will serve master right!”
“How true!”
“When one has the honor of being an expert as master is, one mustn’t
lay himself open to—”
Conseil didn’t have time to complete the compliment. In the midst of
the general silence, a voice became audible. It was Ned Land’s voice,
and it shouted:
“Ahoy! There’s the thing in question, abreast of us to leeward!”