THE BOWHEAD
Captain Simms appeared again in the cabin and on deck, but he was not
the same man. His illness seemed to have robbed him permanently of what
was left him of the spring of manhood. It was as if his juices had been
sucked from his veins and arteries and tissues, leaving him flabby,
irresolute, compared to his former self. Even as Lund shadowed Rainey,
so Simms shadowed Carlsen.
The fine weather vanished, snuffed out in an hour and, day after day,
the _Karluk_ flung herself at mocking seas that pounded her bows with
blows that sounded like the noise of a giant's drum. The sun was never
seen. Through daylight hours the schooner wrestled with the elements in
a ghastly, purplish twilight, lifting under double reefs over great
waves that raised spuming crests to overwhelm her, and were ridden down,
hissing and roaring, burying one rail and covering the deck to the
hatches with yeasty turmoil.
The _Karluk_ charged the stubborn fury of the gale, rolling from side to
side, lancing the seas, gaining a little headway, losing leeway,
fighting, fighting, while every foot of timber, every fathom of rope,
groaned and creaked perpetually, but endured.
To Rainey, this persistent struggle--as he himself controlled the
schooner, legs far astride, his oilskins dripping, his feet awash to the
ankles, spume drenching and whipping him, the wind a lash--brought
exultation and a sense of mastery and confidence such as he had never
before held suggestion of. To guide the ship, constantly to baffle the
sea and wind, the turbulence, buffeting bows and run and counter,
smashing at the rudder, leaping always like a pack of yapping
hounds--this was a thing that left the days of his water-front detail
far behind.
And then he had thought himself in the whirl of things! Even as Simms
seemed to be declining, so Rainey felt that he was coming into the
fulness of strength and health.
Lund was ever with him. Sometimes the girl would come up on deck in her
own waterproofs and stand against the rail to watch the storm, silent as
far as the pair were concerned. And presently Carlsen would come from
below or forward and stand to talk with her until she was tired of the
deck.
They did not seem much like lovers, Rainey fancied. They lacked the
little intimacies that he, though he made himself somewhat of an
automaton at the wheel, could not have failed to see. If the girl
slipped, Carlsen's hand would catch and steady her by the arm; never go
about her waist. And there was no especial look of welcome in her face
when the doctor came to her.
Carlsen seldom took over the wheel. Rainey did more than his share from
sheer love of feeling the control. But one day, at a word from the
girl, Carlsen and she came up to Rainey as he handled the spokes.
"I'll take the wheel a while, Rainey," said the doctor.
Rainey gave it up and went amidships. Out of the tail of his eye he
could see that the girl was pleading to handle the ship, and that
Carlsen was going to let her do so.
Rainey shrugged his shoulders. It was Carlsen's risk. It was no child's
play in that weather to steer properly. The _Karluk_, with her narrow
beam, was lithe and active as a great cat in those waves. It took not
only strength, but watchfulness and experience to hold the course in the
welter of cross-seas.
Lund, whose recognition of voices was perfect, moved amidships as soon
as Carlsen and Peggy Simms came aft. There was no attempt at disguising
the fact that the schooner's afterward was a divided company and, save
for the fact of his blindness tempering the action, the manner of Lund's
showing them his back and deliberately walking off would have been a
deliberate insult.
Not to the girl, Rainey thought. At first he had considered Lund's
character as comparatively simple--and brutal--but he had qualified
this, without seeming consciousness, and he felt that Lund would never
deliberately insult a woman--any sort of woman. He was beginning to feel
something more than an admiration for Lund's strength; a liking for the
man himself had, almost against his will, begun to assert itself.
They stood together by the weather-rail. It was still Rainey's
deck-watch, and at any moment Carlsen might relinquish the wheel back to
him as soon as the girl got tired. Suddenly shouts sounded from forward,
a medley of them, indistinct against the quartering wind. Sandy, the
roustabout, came dashing aft along the sloping deck, catching clumsily
at rail and rope to steady himself, flushed with excitement, almost
hysterical with his news.
"A bowhead, sir!" he cried when he saw Rainey. "And killers after him!
Blowin' dead ahead!"
Beyond the bows Rainey could see nothing of the whale, that must have
sounded in fear of the killers, but he saw half a dozen scythe-like,
black fins cutting the water in streaks of foam, all abreast, their high
dorsals waving, wolves of the sea, hunting for the gray bowhead whale,
to force its mouth open and feast on the delicacy of its living tongue.
So Lund told him in swift sentences while they waited for the whale to
broach.
"Ha'f the time the bowheads won't even try an' git away," said Lund.
"Lie atop, belly up, plain jellied with fear while the killers help
'emselves. Ha'f the bowheads you git have got chunks bitten out of their
tongues. If they're nigh shore when the killers show up the whales'll
slide way out over the rocks an' strand 'emselves."
Rainey glanced aft. Sandy had carried his warning to Carlsen and the
girl, and now was craning over the lee rail, knee-deep in the wash,
trying to see something of the combat. Peggy Simms' lithe figure was
leaning to one side as she, too, gazed ahead, though she still paid
attention to her steering and held the schooner well up, her face bright
with excitement, wet with flying brine, wisps of yellow hair streaming
free in the wind from beneath the close grip of her woolen
tam-o'-shanter bonnet of scarlet. Carlsen was pointing out the racing
fins of the killers.
"Bl-o-ows!" started the deep voice of a lookout, from where sailors and
hunters had grouped in the bows to witness this gladiatorial combat
between sea monsters, staged fittingly in a sea that was running wild.
Rainey strained his gaze to catch the steamy spiracle and the outthrust
of the great head.
"_Bl-o-ows!_" The deep voice almost leaped an octave in a sudden shrill
of apprehension. Other voices mingled with his in a clamor of dismay.
"Look out! Oh, look out! Dead ahead!"
The enormous bulk of the whale had appeared, not to spout, but to lie
belly up, rocking on the surface with fins outspread, paralyzed with
terror, directly in the course of the _Karluk_, while toward it, intent
only on their blood lust, leaped the killers, thrusting at its head as
the schooner surged down. In that tremendous sea the impact would be
certain to mean the staving in of something forward, perhaps the
springing of a butt.
"Hard a lee!" yelled Rainey. "Up with her! Up!"
It was desire to vent his own feelings, rather than necessity for the
command, that made Rainey yell the order, for he could see the girl
striving with the spokes, Carlsen lending his strength to hers. The
sheets were well flattened, the wind almost abeam, and there was no need
to change the set of fore and main.
Forward, the men jumped to handle the headsails. The _Karluk_ started to
spin about on its keel, instinct to the changing plane of the rudder.
But the waves were running tremendously high, and the wind blowing with
great force, the water rolling in great mountains of sickly greenish
gray, topped with foam that blew in a level scud.
As the schooner hung in a deep trough, the wind struck at her, bows on.
With the gale suddenly spilled out of them, the topsails lashed and
shivered, and the fore broke loose with the sharp report of a gunshot
and disappeared aft in the smother.
Rainey saw one huge billow rising, curving, high as the gaff of the
main, it seemed to him, as he grasped at the coil of the main halyards.
Down came the tons of water, booming on the deck that bent under the
blow, spilling in a great cataract that swashed across the deck.
His feet were swept from under him, for a moment he seemed to swing
horizontal in the stream, clutching at the halyards. The sea struck the
opposite rail with a roar that threatened to tear it away, piling up and
then seething overboard.