For like the Duke of York
We have some stalwart men,
And we led them out to the High, High Sea,
And we led them back again.
NEW CHANTEY.
We began this day with a chantey—a cheerful, fine-weather chantey. There
are lugubrious songs too for bad weather or unhappy crews—“Stormalong,”
for instance, “Stormie,” who “heard the angels call.” I associate that
slow minor air with the dreary sough and rush of wind and seas south of
Cape Horn. But to-day it was the cheery
[Music]
“Then blow, ye winds, hi ho, to California,
For there’s plenty gold, so I’ve been told,
On the banks of Sacramento.”
It’s ages and ages since I’ve heard it, and to-day it came off by chance
with a go! We were below amongst the ropes and harpoons, Henriksen and
I and some men, and had rigged a hand-pump to shift fresh water from
midship tank into the steward’s, and we set to, coats off, four at a
time, to pump, and I think the captain began; the fine weather we have
struck must have given us spirits, for the chantey rang out all right;
and the fellows on deck were quite surprised and looked down, grinning.
Norsemen are not great at chanteys as a rule, but “California” is known
pretty well round the world by all nationalities.
[Illustration: FLENSING BLUBBER OFF POLAR BEAR SKINS]
[Illustration: WHALE UNDERSIDE UP IN TOW ALONGSIDE
The ribbed white of their undersides is like the white of a kid glove.]
The origin of the chapter heading is perhaps obscure. It was inspired by
the fact that we reached the outer ocean, returned to Colla Firth and
shelter in the evening, and dropped anchor in the twilight opposite the
Norwegian wooden-painted buildings of the Alexandra Whale Company, which
all the workers have left for the winter, the Norsemen to Norway, and the
Shetlanders to their crofts, like bees to enjoy their summer earnings
through the winter.
The morning was perfect so we weighed anchor about five A.M. As we passed
Haldane’s house at Lochend, the black blinds were still down and the
sun shining on its white wall, so we did not as much as blow our horn
to disturb its inmates but hied away for the open sea again, past these
Ramna Stacks and held a course N.W. For about ten miles we kept this
course till we got to the forty and sixty fathom soundings that mark the
change to deep water, then turned S.W., gradually leaving Shetland below
the horizon with Foula, the outlying craggy island showing grey against a
pale rib of salmon-coloured sky beneath the grey pigeon-coloured clouds.
And for once in a way we have what may be called a smooth sea, at least
there’s no white water, and alas and alas, no whales nor any sign of life
in the ocean. Evidently the season is over, the Gulf Stream has been
switched off.
There is still so much to do on board that there is barely time for
disappointment. The whales must be somewhere, so why not farther down our
Scottish coast; so we keep going south, one man only watching, all the
rest of us busy with a variety of work—the artist, the first mate and a
hand laying down a flooring on our main-deck or waist, made of planks
we brought from the wood behind Henriksen’s house on Nottero. This is
to save our permanent deck, for when the whales do come they will have
their dark, silky skin and firm, white fat hauled up on to this from
their bodies in the sea, and there will be so much cutting and chopping
and hauling wire ropes and iron flinching blocks across this waist or
main-deck that our permanent deck would suffer in appearance were it not
protected. And the smith is tackling a piece of ironwork, with the bos’n
as assistant, making clamps to hold chock blocks for the new scuttle
hatch or companion we have made through the big hatch over the main hold.
This being just small enough to admit a man, we can leave it open in bad
weather for access to the hold.
The captain attends to a thousand and one things without pretending to
do so, leaving as much as possible to the mate and crew, and has a two
hours’ sleep, preparatory to a night on the bridge, and works out the
course on his chart. We are aiming—failing whales—at Tobermory, and at
odd intervals we talk whales and prospects, about this kind of whale
and the other, and the sperm in particular, that we are now setting
our hopes on meeting; as the finner has not put in an appearance, the
valuable sperm compared to the less valuable but infinitely stronger
fighting finners. Also Henriksen looks on a little as I paint, for he
is just as interested in my painting as I am interested in his pricking
out our course on the face of one of those most suggestive pictures, the
Admiralty charts. There is nothing more fascinating, even thrilling, to
my mind than picking up this light or the other as we do to-night, and
verifying it on the chart in the cabin.
Noaphead Light on the Orkneys is the first we will pick up, we should
see that soon after (or before) picking up the “three flashes in quick
succession” from that lonely skerry, Sule Skerry, between Orkney and Cape
Wrath. Its guiding circle of radiance intersects the circle of the rays
from Cape Wrath. Cape Wrath is white and red alternately. Then we will
hie for the Butt of Lewis, weather permitting. St Ebba give us better
weather than we met there in the Balæna, a whaling barque of the old
style out from Dundee uncountable years ago—we were twenty days hove to
in a wicked gale with broken bulwarks, spars, and tattered sails—twenty
days between Cape Wrath and the south-west of Ireland—bad spaewives did
it! Now, holy St Ebba, hear our prayer. Dear saint, give us gentle winds
and fair, and for what we are about to receive in the way of whales or
fine weather we will be most truly thankful.
This is the first mate’s birthday—he is certificated as master and has
attained the ripe age of twenty-two, quite an advanced age for many
a Norwegian master, and we celebrate his birthday and incidentally
our first really fine day since we left Norway. Our skipper believes
in making small celebrations on shipboard. He likes to get good work
from the men and be friends at the same time, a perfectly possible
attainment. All hands get a small bottle of light beer, and the steward
(cook, he would be called with us) makes pastry for all hands. We begin
our festive meal with cormorant fricassee, you could not escape the
smell anywhere aft this afternoon. I can’t quite rise to cormorant;
penguins and several other sea-birds I like; but there’s no accounting
for taste, and our _mechanicien_ or engineer, a Swede, simply dotes on
cormorants, and regrets leaving the Shetlands and the endless supply of
these hard-featured birds. Then we have the pastry, and such pastry I
have never seen equalled; certainly our cook is more than steward, he is
a _chef_! And the bottle of brandy is brought forth (out of bond, one
shilling a bottle and not bad at that). Each of us has a little, and
it is sent to the fo’c’sle and comes back still half full—one bottle
for fifteen men and the bottle not empty! and a box of cigars goes from
mess-room to fo’c’sle likewise, and comes back half full, so our crew
cannot be said to be extravagant; then, to complete the celebration,
Nansen, the steward, sits on the main-hatch and plays the ship’s
melodeon, and Rolf, the youngest on board, dances a pas seul on our new
floor—a dance between a mazurka and hornpipe, with two or three clean
somersaults thrown in. He is a pretty dancer, and of good family, I am
told, too lively for home, just the sort you need on board ship. He and
the steward of the pale face and yellow hair danced together. I could
just distinguish them in the dark from the bridge against the light
planks of our newly laid working deck. For a moment, whilst the skipper
played, my heart stood still! for the steward nearly went over our low
bulwarks at a roll from the swell—his exquisite pastry flashed across my
mind.
We saw Sule skerry twinkling in the night a few miles to starboard. I
would like to make a visit there, it would be such a soothing place to
live on, the solitude must be so emphatic, for it is equidistant from
Orkney and Cape Wrath, and out of sight of either. In the morning the
light on Cape Wrath went out and we saw the beetling cliffs backed with
high, bare ridges of the Sutherland mountains against a yellow sunrise.
On a soft, rolling, rippling sea and far off, a mere speck beneath the
cliffs, we made out a fellow-whaler (only a steamer), with its long
trail of smoke beneath the cliff steaming east, and we thought she was
the Hebrides, one of the steamers of a small company, the Blacksod Bay
Company in Ireland, which I wish well. Evidently it was on its road
to Norway, so we gathered that whales must be scarce and the weather
probably bad on the Irish coast.
Our saint has answered our prayer, and instead of the wild weather we
associate with these parts we go comfortably along at eight knots, with
the engine singing a soft song to its gentle beat. What a difference
between the lot of the motor engineer at sea and the steamer’s engineer,
the motor man in a pleasantly warm, spacious room, the other in cramped
space with considerable heat, and the clanging of stokers’ shovels.
Past the E. of Lewis we motor steadily. One killer or grampus we saw, and
about a dozen dolphins in the three days’ run south, and very few birds.
So we felt confirmed in our belief that we should proceed to Southern
Seas now, instead of waiting for whales in northern latitudes. Evidently
the season here is over.
Now we have Neist Light and its double flash, to port, and we pass
Dunvegan and wish we could see the familiar mountains of Skye. But the
light is all we have, and welcome it is; past it a little and we will
have the light on Hyskeir Rock to guide us on our way till we pick up
Colonsay and our old friend Ardnamurchan, and the light on its point
where the white-tailed eagles used to breed.
Burns said: “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.”
If he had been picking up lights from Flugga on Ultima Thule down our
intricate west coast, with its tides and islands, on a dark night, he
would have held his breath with the thought of all the human effort and
forethought these lighthouses express of man’s humanity to man—to our
countrymen, to my Norse companions, to the Russian trader, whose light we
see to-night not far astern; nation to nation offering kindly guidance
and warning. So we have various colours in the night, the pale flashing
lighthouse we steer to, and two golden eyes from our galley casting
patches of light on deck, and on either side of us a phosphorescent Milky
Way with occasionally vivid flashes as we turn over a wave in the smooth
water.
But it is to bed, to bed, for to-morrow we must be astir early, to meet
relatives in Tobermory, and anchor in its circular bay, where we have so
often anchored when we were young and unspoiled, and Mull to Ardnamurchan
in a dinghy seemed a long way, and whaling was as a tale that is told.
At four o’clock in the morning we pass Hyskeir Rocks, pass them three
cables to starboard. It is dark and hazy but their light sweeps across
our deck: soon the lights on Ardnamurchan and Coll greet us; and as sea
and mountain and air faintly separate, we pass the light on the point and
pick up Kilchoan, and then the Tobermory Light.
Ardnamurchan shows a rugged, mountainous outline against the morning
sky, and to a stranger coming from the sea, picking up the lights as he
goes, it seems inhospitable. But to the writer it recalls some similar
mornings—after smoky town down south—coming up for winter shooting.
What glens there are of birches for black game, corries for deer, lochs
for little brown trout and burns for sea-trout! My thanks to relatives
for the free run we had when we were young—Ardnamurchan Point to Glen
Borrodale, what a playground! North beyond the point and the hills above
Kilchoan we see the hills above Loch Aylort and the coast of Morar,
“Blessed Morar,” perhaps the most beautiful spot of the most beautiful
country in the world. Where else do you find stone pines, in deep heather
growing right down to a white coral strand, and glass-green sea-water.
Then Drimnin and Glen Morven appear west and south of Ardnamurchan, full
of memories of relations, of piping, singing, hunting and sailing.
The relatives, we presume, are all asleep now, so we won’t awake them,
as we pass, with repeated blasts on our foghorn, as we half thought of
doing—no, we will later rouse them up with a Fiery Cross reply-paid
telegram from Tobermory to come across the sound to see this newest
whaler. Possibly we will, after considering mundane matters, such as
potatoes and marmalade for all hands, drop anchor at Drimnin or Glen
Morven and ask the relatives to step off and see our wonders on board
ship, but the anchorage at neither of the places is of the very best and
Tobermory is perfect.
* * * * *
My Norse friends fell in love with Drimnin and Tobermory and its round
sheltered bay at first sight: we had only too short a stay, for a wire
told us my cousin, Mr C. H. Urmston, a fellow-director in our Company,
would await me in Oban, so we up anchored, went over to Morven and dipped
our flag and blew the horn opposite Drimnin, and passed the Urmstons’
house, Glen Morven, in silence, for we hear it is let to a stranger from
the south, and down the familiar Sound of Mull we proceeded on this
lovely summer afternoon to the Great Oban.
By the way, I met two men interested in whaling in Tobermory! When your
mind runs on a subject, is it not odd how many people you meet who also
take an interest in same? This man is Yule by name; we met on the subject
of bagpipes; piping is the best bond and introduction to the best men! So
with two interests, whaling and piping, you at once get very intimate. He
came from the east coast—I never met a Highlandman whaler, and not often
a sailor (they are generally Captains or Chiefs, they have brains).
“Did you ever hear the name of Yule as a whaler?” he said; and I replied
I’d heard more stories about Yule and whales and white bears and Arctic
jokes and adventures from Dundee to north of the Pole than of any other
man alive or dead. “Well,” he said, “that was my grandfather,” and he
referred me to his father up the close, to verify the grandfather’s
exploits. So if anyone who reads this wishes yarns true and hair-curling
about Greenland’s icy mountains, etc., let him call at Tobermory, on Yule
senior. No. 51, the third close past the post office.
A fair lady at Tobermory graced our vessel with a fleeting visit. Miss
Sheila Allan, of the famous line of that name. She rowed from Aros
Castle in her dinghy and sprang on board, leaving her collie in charge,
overhauled our strange craft, fore and aft, sprang into the dinghy again,
a mere cockle-shell, and rowed off again half-a-mile to windward, against
a fresh breeze, as if it was the most ordinary everyday thing for one
of our ladies to do; many a fair Brunhilda could have done the same. I
did not tell my Norse friends that she was at all exceptional, so our
Norsemen have formed a lofty idea of Scotswomen as mariners. I wished
they could have seen her, as I have, out on the Sound of Mull in wind and
rain, fair hair flying, yellow oilskins dripping, racing her own cutter,
three reefs down, through the spray for the Tobermory Cup.