To-day it is almost rough, a fresh north-east breeze, and as our little
ship rolls far and often in a swell, or anything like a sea, strong men
turn pale and say they feel a little tired and will go and lie down.
Killers appeared at _middag-mad_, and but for the excusable lassitude
of our party we might have tried for one, even though it is a little
rough for accurate harpooning. Their great black fins, “gaff-topsails,”
sailor-men call them, cut through the water with a spirt of foam like
a destroyer’s bow. Some say they use their dorsal fin as a weapon
with which to attack large whales from underneath (Balænoptera and
Mysticetus), but I do not believe this, for it is not sufficiently firm
to do harm.
Some have higher fins than others. I feel afraid to mention the length
I have seen them myself, or to quote the height another observer has
given to me; but I think we may say eight feet and be well on the safe
side. Others are only about two or three feet. In the Antarctic ice I
have often seen them going along the edge of a floe, and our men stated
that with this fin they pulled the seals off the edge of the ice into the
water, but verily I do not believe them. The same men vowed that the Cape
pigeon, which they saw for the first time in their lives, a chequered
black and white petrel (_Daption capensis_), was a cuckoo. They were
quite sure of this, for one of these Dundonian whalers had once spent a
summer on shore and had seen a cuckoo! That was in the memorable year
when he saw ripe corn for the first time.
Another excuse we make to ourselves for not pursuing these whales is
that they do not have very much blubber; still, if we fall in with them
again in little quieter water when we all feel fit, we may take some.
When you get fast to one of these killers the others hang round till
their companion is quite dead, much as sperm whales do, and even try
to help their harpooned friend to freedom by giving him a shoulder on
either side. Bottle-nose whales do the same, so when you get one on a
line you run it till you secure some of the others. Big finners generally
bolt in a great hurry and leave their harpooned relatives to look after
themselves, excepting young finners in apron-strings, which will also
hang round the parent.
Dr W. S. Bruce told me that when he was on H.S.H. the Prince of Monaco’s
yacht with a boat’s crew they tackled one of these killers, and the
unwounded killers came so close to the boat they could touch them with
their hands. What must have been most interesting and instructive was the
fact that the skipper who did the harpooning had been a Peterhead whaler
and he knew all the expressions appropriate to the first rush of a whale
in four languages—Scots, English, French and Italian—and he used them
all. These killers run to twenty or thirty feet. With really big whales,
heavy harpoon, big gun and huge lines, the whole business is so gigantic
and awe-inspiring that men are silent, breathlessly so! But with lighter
tackle somehow or other there is usually a good deal of small talk. This
killer thrasher grampus or Orca gladiator, Tyrannus balænarum, has great
teeth and eats whales piecemeal, porpoise, seals, and, some say, his own
kind.
An accepted Danish authority, Eschricht, declared he opened a killer, and
it contained the remains of no less than thirteen porpoises and fourteen
seals. Personally, I do not understand how, even with two stomachs, a
thirty-foot grampus could hold such a lot, unless they were very small
specimens. The reader may not be aware that many whales have two or
more stomachs, like ruminants, but whether they rechew their food is
doubtful. The immobility of the tongue, and in some species the absence
of teeth, is supposed to make this improbable, but to the writer this
immobility of the tongue is not proved; it seems to be a great purple
pillow covered with innumerable nerve points which might readily break up
the small shrimps on the rough, mat-like surface of the whalebone palate.
If they ruminate, and that under water for hours at a time, it would
account for the way they sometimes appear all at once in numbers and feed
voraciously, and then vanish for hours.
I have made a picture of a pack of rather small killers attacking a
finner whale, an incident I observed in the southern ice from the
distance of two or three yards. They pursued the large whale like a pack
of black and white hounds, but neither whale nor hounds made a sound that
I could hear.
Dr Frangius, however, in his “Treatise of Animals,” says that when an
orca pursues “a whale” the latter makes a terrible bellowing, like a bull
when bitten by a dog. I wonder what kind of whale he refers to, for I
have seen a number of finner whales being attacked by orcas and have not
heard any bellowing, except the narwhal, whose groan is certainly like a
subdued bellow of a cow.
Yesterday we had wind, and the sky that portended wind if any sky does.
When you have this sky it is almost safe to prophesy wind—say three days
of it—this is our second day.
We make one mile an hour forward. We are a hundred miles off Norway
and hoped to be in soundings fishing cod at two A.M. to-morrow on the
coast. But here we are plugging almost at the same hole, our poor wee
ship throbbing with the strain. We carried away our mainsail yesterday—a
thing to make a yachtsman weep; still, after all, it was a sail, and
even one sail on a steamer gives dignity. Don Luis Herrero in the lee
alley-way just cleared the halyard block. Had he not been very quick in
his movements, as many Spaniards are, he would have been a dead man.
Starboard bear broke half out; that is nothing new. William has learned
the mandolin, he has a piece of wood in his cage, one side of which is
crossed horizontally with stout wire, and with the wood, holding it
in his teeth, he scrapes the wires up and down and plays three notes
for ever and for ever. I do hope that, in whatever zoo he may become a
resident, he may be provided with a similar instrument with which to fill
his life. He, as far as I can see, now makes no effort to escape like
his big relative the Starboard bear, who is more of a mechanical genius
than an artist. William’s sister Christabel behaves well on the whole,
takes lots of tinned milk and water. Poor old Starboard, he really looked
pathetic after his big effort this morning; he is black, or brown-black
now, as I have already mentioned, and his black eyes, by contrast, look
light brown, so does his nose. No one would take him for an ice-bear.
His voice changed after the effort, and he made a sort of piteous sound
instead of challenging and held his mouth open, and I suggested water,
and Archie poured a pail of fresh water into his feeding drawer from a
chink in the roof of the cage, and he eagerly lapped it up and went off
to sleep. They have plenty of salt water—a small sea came over the bows a
little while ago, and swept away every chip they had torn; incidentally
it swept into an open bunker and nearly drowned the Prophet, who was
acting as stoker in the engine-room. He came on deck looking rather wet
and depressed and fossicked round and got the cover of the stokehold
closed; it was under a bear’s cage, so it was not so easy. In the ice the
Prophet was a jolly bear-hunter, with lasso round his shoulder (which
he could not throw), also he was clean and “the Prophet.” With such
yellow curly hair and eyebrows and blue eyes and pink, clean face he
seemed essentially an ice-man; it is rather a come-down to be merely a
black stoker homeward bound at the end of a cruise, and with nothing to
prophesy.
My word, it is time to shut my cabin door on this early morning.
Starboard bear and a starboard cabin! and the bear awake and growling
hell and thunder, and a big sea running too. Blow his money value we say!
Everyone is rather tired of the violent ceaseless movement and the
drenching of spray, but our two youngest Spaniards, in heavy coats,
make merry over it, sitting up on the bridge and chatting and singing
continuously, pluckily keeping their spirits up. I think they would do
the same even if we had a full-fledged gale.
Our musical steward, sad to say, has felt the roughness of the trip, fog
and wind combined, and this afternoon we were anxious about him, rolled
him up very tight in blankets and put a hot bottle at his feet, for he
was throwing up blood and seemed about to die; in fact, he looks a dead
man now. Hamilton too is feeling tired and lies down. Altogether we would
be glad to be up some fiord fishing cod for the sake of the rest and
fresh food.
We had a gleam of sun from the north to-night, golden precious sunlight;
it touched waves far away in front of us till they were yellow as golden
guineas, while the crests near us were colder, more sickly white than
silver or thawing snow.
Every cloud has its silver lining, but give me the touch of gold on the
crests of long waves at the end of a gale, half the crest radiant, and
the side in shadow cold, bluish white.
But our short-lived sun-gleam fades and we are all in grey—the timbers
creak, creaking anxiously, sorely, and we plod along, two miles to the
hour at the best, our disreputable sail set again,—a subdued crew longing
for land.
One comfort about this wooden craft is, that she was built for
bottle-nose whaling and has bulwarks. The modern steam-whaler is somewhat
smaller and has no bulwarks, only a rail, because she must offer as
little resistance as possible to a rapid side rush of a big whale. So in
such weather, even in this half-gale, they would be under water all but
the bridge, whilst here we can go nearly dry-shod behind nearly two and
a half feet of bulwark, behind which our too-strong she-cook in slippers
can easily dodge the little water that comes on board.
* * * * *
Seven-forty P.M.—An interval here of twenty-four hours.
It would take each of us books in black margins to describe the
melancholy of the gale; not a very severe gale, with only low waves for
the amount of wind, but they are hard, and telling on our little home. It
is remarkable what low, hard waves we have here. South of Norway, with
similar strength of wind, I am sure the waves would be twice the height,
but here they seem very hard and give heavy hits for their size. South in
the sub-tropics, with half-an-hour’s wind, I have seen waves get up twice
as high as those we had last night, which were not a bit dangerous—have
had them over the bridge, soft and warm, and no harm done; here a wave
that size would do a great deal of damage. In the north I expect this is
due to the greater density of the water owing to its lower temperature.
... Gale all night, falling in morning, leaving an abominable swell.
[Illustration]
Sight land through mist, rain, heavy swell, everyone very tired of life.
Trying to make out where we have got to. Made this jotting in night. It
is not elaborate, but I think it expresses a certain amount of movement.
[Illustration]
And this is a single-line description of the appearance of Norway
as you approach it over the swell. A one-line drawing of swell and
mountain-tops. Why make two lines when one is enough?
In Tuglosund, the north entrance to Trömso fiord, we find stillness and
twilight.
On this sad occasion, 9th of August, we have again to light the midnight
oil, or put it down “candle,” in my cabin—midnight sun versus candle, and
the candle wins. There is absolute stillness, not a sound in the fiord
but the gentle throb of our engine.
How sad it is to lose the light.
* * * * *
It is almost incredible, the tranquillity of the dead-still water as we
lie at anchor fishing cod—breathless stillness, so quiet one does not
know how to go to sleep, no more bracing of limbs now against the side of
the bunk to steady one’s restless slumbers.
[Illustration: OUR ENGINEER’S DAUGHTER AT TRÖMSO]
... Larsen has gone ashore for fresh milk and also fresh eggs, rowing
across the reflections of hill and rocks.
The candle burns straight up without a flicker; last night we could not
have lit a pipe had we felt so inclined—what are we to do about clothes?
Suddenly we feel our double winter clothing is far too thick; can it be
possible that to-morrow morning we will only need thin summer clothes?
As we fished we talked more intimately than before. I found my Spanish
friends had been in our West Highlands; they compared this fiord with
Loch Etive, and Ben Nevis to a snow-capped mountain we have reflected in
the still mirror, and they say the hills remind them of their own—Spain,
West Scotland, and West Norway do indeed have certain similarity.
But the quiet! and the candlelight and the soft northern midnight
twilight in the fiord, and the ripple of the boat coming back with the
milk are great things! to be remembered by themselves for ever and aye.
If our night at anchor at the entrance of the fiord was quiet and
peaceful, Trömso on a Sunday felt even more so. We came in with a brisk
breeze blowing sharp ripples on the sheltered strait or loch, and were
thankful to be under shelter, for the same breeze off the hill-side,
clothed with alder and heather, would be a different thing a hundred
miles north by west.
Even our bears seem to be at rest. By the afternoon we have all got
shaven and shorn, and into more townified clothes, in some cases to
advantage, in others not so. The blue jacket with brass buttons of
the styrmand gives him far more of an air than he had with his old
weather-worn pea jacket. But De Gisbert is ruined. The old Gisbert,
the bear-killer, and the new F. J. de Gisbert would hardly recognise
each other. Polar Gisbert in a great thick, deep blue Iceland jersey,
broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with black beard with a wave in it,
and black hair unbrushed and curling, a vermilion-and-white spotted
handkerchief round his throat, loose corduroy knickers and wooden clogs
like a Dutchman, was a picture of the jolly deep-sea piratical-looking
Columbus we know. But this Gisbert! of Hamburg and Madrid, in a quiet
blue serge suit, with trousers, and brown boots low at the heel, and a
white collar sticking into a closely cropped black beard, and straight
combed-out hair, and a straw hat! might be anyone!
C. A. H. does not change his get-up much, but when he goes home to hang
his bearskins in the ancestral hall, he will have to do so. Sisters hate
beards.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
They, the Dons and Gisbert and Hamilton, have all gone up the hill to
be entertained by a local magnate to-day. I was asked, and was there
before, on our first visit, and it was quite charming—gramophone music,
cigars with red and gold bands, delightful whiskies-and-sodas, and nice
cosy rooms, with the windows all shut. But the cut on my left foot felt
painful on putting on shore boots, and the house being uphill I felt
obliged to deny myself the pleasure, and passed a very quiet afternoon on
board. The engineer’s children came off to see me (and incidentally their
father). The eldest was about twelve, I think, and they talked Norwegian
to me, and opened their blue eyes wide and puckered their fair faces
with wonder, when they found I could not understand their little words,
however distinctly and slowly they said them. They insisted then on my
playing the pipes to them again, and apparently were hugely pleased.
I was sometimes sorry for the engineer’s lot when we were at sea, in bad
weather, for he is pale, rather like a gentle Louis Stevenson, and seemed
to have little to interest him at sea beyond the engine, but now I do not
pity him for his welcome home from such a beauty of a daughter, with such
jolly blue eyes, so full of wonder and fun. The whole family looked over
my pictures and were interested in ice-bears (Is bjorn) and ice-floes,
but I think they were more fetched by a picture of the Fonix, done this
morning, of the effect yesterday morning at three o’clock in the gale. I
daresay they realised from it what sort of a life their poor dad leads
sometimes—at sea.
By the way, it was not a dangerous gale, though tiresome and
uncomfortable. But to show how differently things strike people, I heard
that our two youngest Spaniards, who spent all night on the bridge,
apparently as jolly as could be, chatting and laughing, believed all the
time the ship would very likely go down—plucky of them, I think. And yet
again, when we were in danger of being pinched between two ice-floes a
few days previously, they were joyously potting skuas and gulls on the
floe, without an idea of the danger, whilst the writer was hopping about
like a hen on a hot girdle, with apprehension.
Hamilton will not look at this picture, it makes him simply squirm, which
is rather flattering to the artist. Just now he says: “It is too beastly
like.” I must show him it again, perhaps after many days—say in a London
or Clydebank fog in November. Perhaps pleasure will then be what past
pain was.