THE PRIZE WHALE AND THE RESCUED BOAT
I have said little about the cook, who was so kind to me the first
morning at sea. He was always pleasant and obliging, and he used to
say that he only regretted that he couldn’t prepare for me some nice
little bits like those my mother used to cook for me at home. One
day I said to him:
“Why is it that you scrape out the plates so carefully and then put
the scrapings into a big cask? Why don’t you throw them overboard?”
“Because I’m a money getter. Don’t you know what slush is? Why, it’s
the scrapings of the plates. I’ve heard it said that they use it on
some ships to slush the masts with. Not on this vessel—worth too
much. I put it in casks and there it stays till end of the voyage.
It don’t rot, gets sweeter all the time. When voyage is over, sold
to be made over, and out comes beautiful, rich lard. Goes to the
best restaurants and brings big prices. I get my lay in the slush.”
“I never heard of such a thing,” I declared.
“I make out of it in another way,” he continued.
“How’s that?”
“Why, I scrape the plates so carefully that often they don’t need
washin’; so I save labor.”
All this was said seriously; and I have to say that I was not
disturbed. I thought it a joke that the rich should regard as a
luxury what we poor sailors discarded as worthless. And then I
thought that, if the story had been told to me before I left my
father’s roof, I should have been inclined to disbelieve it.
The cook continued:
“Now that we’ve got fresh stuff on board, let me tell you this. You
know that the cabin gets the best, the steerage, where the under
officers, boat-steerers and carpenter eat, next best, and the
forecastle last. Nevertheless, you folks will get some of it, and
I’ll do my best to make it taste right. Now let me tell you that in
this warm weather the forecastle is no place to eat in, so I’ve
asked Lakeum to let me serve the boys on deck, and he’s given his
consent, and this will be done so long as the weather’s warm. After
that back to the forecastle. You boys will sit on hatch and
windlass, and I’ll serve the food in a new way. There’ll be two
tubs, one of them called the meat kit, into which I’ll dump the
boiled meat, and a second, without any name, into which I’ll dump
the vegetables. Then every man will help himself. Coffee in the
mornin’ and tea at night, I’ll serve in buckets. The fruit they let
the boys have they can eat as they please, so long as it lasts.”
The adoption of this new method seemed to cheer the men up. One
advantage was that we were disposed to converse more than we did in
the gloomy forecastle, and pleasantries were indulged in. The good
manners noticeable in the forecastle were not discarded on deck.
Food may not have been partaken of according to the requirements of
polite society, but each had due regard for the rights of others,
and there was no sign of greediness.
I have said that I was not a great success at the masthead, and I
repeat it. My vision may have been poor or I may not have had very
good luck, but good fortune came in an unexpected way. A few days
after leaving the island I stood in the hoop, looking out on a sea
that was hardly moved by a ripple and on a sky that was clear of
clouds. I think I have said that a whale will suddenly appear when
for some time not a spout has been seen from the ship. The belief is
that the whale must have sounded at a place a long way off and then
made great speed under water. While I was scanning the horizon,
suddenly my attention was attracted by a spout not more than two
hundred yards away, and I shouted “B-l-o-w-s, b-l-o-w-s, b-l-o-w-s.
There he breaches! There he white waters.” I saw just enough of the
whale to convince me that he was a large one.
Silva’s boat was the first to take water, and that boat was the one
which got him. When the whale was fast to the ship, Silva said, “I
never see such a whale in my whalin’. He’s the biggest fellow I ever
see; he’ll make a good deal over a hundred. When we struck him he
didn’t seem to show no spunk. I never see a whale with such weak
flukes. He didn’t make much more suds than a washwoman makes, and,
when he sounded, it wa’n’t no more than a boy divin’. The line went
out so slow that you’d think there was a child pullin’ at the other
end, and we didn’t lose no more than eighty fathoms. And he ain’t no
dry skin. His jaws is all perfect. He ain’t been fightin’ with no
whale. There’s somethin’ the matter with the big fellow, but I don’t
know as we’ll find out.”
[Illustration: I shouted “B-l-o-w-s, b-l-o-w-s, b-l-o-w-s. There he
breaches!”]
Turning to me, Silva said, “See here, young fellow, I guess you’ve
got ahead of all the boys. Seems to me you’ll be sportin’ a gold
watch when you get back to New Bedford.”
One may fancy how pleased and elated I was. The whale was the
largest we had taken, and it was possible that we might take one
larger, but not very probable. The blubber peeled off in splendid
strips and appeared rich in oil. The general opinion was that the
whale would yield at least a hundred barrels, and one man’s estimate
was a hundred and twenty.
“I’ve sailed the seas most of my life and the largest sperm we ever
took made a hundred and ten,” said one of the old sailors.
When the blubber was stripped off and the head severed, the body
rolled over; and then a man, who had a spade in his hand, uttered an
exclamation.
“What’s the matter?” some one asked.
“What’s the matter? Look at that big bunch.” He pointed to a spot
where the intestines were greatly swollen. “There’s something in
there, sure. I don’t know what it is. I never see anything like that
before.”
“Well, I know what it is,” said Captain Gamans, who was passing.
“Give me that spade and I’ll show you what it is, even though it’s
the first time I ever saw anything of the kind.”
The captain pressed with the spade, and the intestines opened and
disclosed a large substance, which he declared to be ambergris.
There was great excitement, and the buzzing reminded me of a
gathering of gossipers. While deference, of course, had to be paid
to the captain, yet every one had something to say about the
preservation and uses of this strange and valuable secretion. The
truth is, no one knew anything about ambergris, for a man might
spend his life on a whaler without ever seeing a whale which carried
a pound of the substance. The captain ordered a large tub to be
brought. This was lowered, and a couple of sturdy Portuguese
descended and lifted the mass into the receptacle. When it was
landed on deck the buzzing was resumed as the inspection proceeded.
Every one had to feel of it. It was hard and apparently perfectly
formed.
Now the truth was, the captain didn’t know any more about ambergris
than the foremast hands. Addressing Lakeum, he said, “We shall have
to take this stuff home with us, for it’s so valuable I wouldn’t
dare ship it, and the question is how best to take care of it. I
suppose the best thing to do is to put it in a small cask and head
it up and then put the cask into a bigger one filled with water.
This will tend to keep it cool and preserve it. What do you think?”
“This is the first ambergris,” said Lakeum, “that I ever saw, and I
confess that I don’t know how to treat it. What do you say if I ask
the crew if any one of them knows anything about taking care of it?”
The captain assented. Only one man responded to the inquiry. It was
Kreelman.
“I never was on a whaler that took any ambergris, but a man who was
on the _Tiger_, which took a whale in 1848 which had a lump that
weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, told me that they made a great
mistake. He said that they kept it moist and it kind of spoiled, and
he said that, if they had kept it dry, they would have got ten
thousand dollars more for it than they did.”
The captain said nothing, and the men were ordered to their tasks.
His expression was not pleasant, for it was evident that he did not
like a statement, apparently reliable, which ran counter to views he
had just expressed. But it is a fact that the ambergris was kept dry
during the remainder of the voyage. It took over three days and
nights to cut-in, try-out and boil down our leviathan, and stow down
the oil. Just before the figures were announced, there was a
resumption of the guessing. The best guess was a hundred and nine
barrels; the actual yield was one hundred and eleven barrels and
four gallons. After the cleaning up, the whale and his product
constituted the topic of conversation among the crew for a long
time.
In the social hour they made all manner of fun of me, or rather of
the prospective watch. One said that the watch would prove to be
second-hand; another that it wouldn’t go; a third that when it was
wound the noise would be as loud as that made by the winding of a
clock; and a fourth that watches of the kind were sold at five
dollars the gross. They evidently endeavored to draw me out, but I
was silent. Then they took up the ambergris and, in a serious way,
began to discuss its value and uses. Several men thought that it was
the perfume itself, but Kreelman insisted that it was the substance
which prevented evaporation. Then tales were told of the fabulous
sums which druggists had paid for the substance and more fabulous
tales about the size and weight of various lumps of the article.
Then some one asked:
“Does Fancy Chest get the ambergris beside the watch?”
One would think that such a foolish question would only have
elicited a laugh; instead, it gave rise to an animated discussion.
“If he does get both, he’ll be a kind of Crocus,” another declared.
“And who was Crocus?”
“He was a rich man—lived in New York—had more money than any other
man in the world.”
Though I was a boy, I had seen enough of my companions to know that
any proffer of enlightenment would be resented; so I did not tell
them that Croesus was intended.
In answer to the first question, one of the men said, “This is the
way I look at it. If sightin’ the biggest whale wins a prize, then
the ambergris in it, which is so rarely found in whales, is a prize
also and belongs to Fancy Chest.”
The countenances of most of the men betrayed anxiety, but the
expression changed and there was a roar of laughter when Ohoo said,
“If Fancy Chest get watch and ambergris, den he get whole ting—de
blubber, jaw bone and teeth. Why not? Dat ain’t no common sense.”
The discussion now went on in a milder way and was quite prolonged.
It ended with the emphatic statement of Kreelman:
“Everybody, from captain down, has shipped on a lay. We all have our
lay or share in the whale, and everything in him. If Fancy Chest
shipped on one one-hundred-and-eightieth lay, that’s his part of the
ambergris, and that’s all there is to it.”
There was now general acquiescence, and I silently concurred.
The next morning I was in the crow’s nest and the Gay Head Indian
was, too.
“I see somethin’,” he said.
“Where?”
“Off there on the weather bow.”
I scanned the horizon earnestly and then asked, “What is it—a pod or
a single whale?”
“It ain’t no whale. Can’t you see it—just a faint little thing?”
I regretted my defective vision. The Indian leaned forward, showing
by his attitude and fixed look that he was intensely interested. I
heard him mutter; and now I, too, was greatly interested. I fancied
I could see a faint outline. The Indian renewed his muttering and
suddenly broke out, “Boat ahoy!”
Up came the captain’s voice, “Where away?”
“Three points on the weather bow, sir. Looks like a whaleboat.”
It was almost time for the Indian and myself to be relieved, but
fortunately we remained aloft long enough for the Indian, at least,
to make out the object and announce the situation.
“Whaleboat, sure,” he said.
By this time the object was plain to me and I was soon able to make
out a boat. The Indian kept gazing intently and began muttering
again. Before long he shouted for the captain’s information:
“Only four men rowin’. Looks like one man hurt.”
When we descended, we found the carpenter out with the medicine
chest. It seemed to me as if time never passed so slowly. Did the
boat belong to some vessel which had suffered shipwreck, and had its
occupants been forced to resort to the awful expedients of famished
sailors, or had it merely lost its ship and been only a few days
astray? This last conjecture was the more probable, as we were
cruising on a whaling ground, and, though it was of vast extent, it
was rarely traversed by merchant vessels. As the boat came near us,
the ship was hove to. The Indian was right; there were four men at
the oars, and the man not rowing was bent over as if he had been
injured. To the captain’s hail the reply came from the man with the
steering oar:
“Boat of the bark _Magic_ of New Bedford—struck a whale late
yesterday afternoon. Man’s arm caught in warp and injured. Warp cut,
lost bark, been out all night.”
The injured man was the first to be helped aboard. He appeared
exhausted and was evidently in great pain. It is wonderful how
gentle and tender rough men can be when their services to a sufferer
are suddenly invoked. The man sat down on the hatch and was first
given a generous drink of New England rum. Then the captain and
carpenter proceeded to relieve him of his jacket. This was done very
slowly, and gently done, too. Even then the patient winced and his
face bore witness to the pain occasioned. The garment removed, an
unpleasant spectacle was presented. The sleeve of the shirt was
saturated with blood, which was dry, black and coated, and this
evidently had staunched the flow as his companions in the boat had
had no means of treating the injured member. The cook brought warm
water, and the carpenter soaked the sleeve until it parted from the
flesh. Then he severed the sleeve near the shoulder and the bruised
arm was revealed. First, washing it so as to remove any lint that
might adhere, and applying a lotion with the delicate touch of a
woman, he then wound the bandage around it with the skill of a
surgeon. The sufferer was then allowed the freedom of the cabin.
“A good job,” said one of the sailors. “He done so well, Peter, why
don’t you have him take your tooth out?”
Peter, a good-natured foremast hand, was suffering from toothache
and was very disconsolate. He said that he had never had any trouble
with his teeth before, and that this was the first tooth to decay. I
think he was pleased with the carpenter’s medical proficiency and
anticipated the extraction of the tooth without much suffering.
Peter was told to lie down on the hatch, and then there followed one
of the most barbarous practices I ever beheld. Forceps were then in
use, but the carpenter had none, and used the old-fashioned rollers
instead. The tooth was really ground out of the man’s jaw in a way
that reminded me of grinding sausages. He bellowed like a wild
animal, and the tears stood in his eyes. His glance showed
resentment rather than gratitude. Yet the carpenter did his best
with his old-fashioned implement.
Kreelman said, quietly, “Carpenter, surgeon, blacksmith, dentist,
all one.”
The mate of the rescued boat told an interesting story. In the late
afternoon they had lowered, and, after a long chase, had made fast
to a whale; a kink in the warp had led to the accident and the warp
was cut. It was nearly dusk, and the ship was not to be seen. They
took what they thought was the proper direction, but no lights were
observed.
“If we don’t pick her up to-day, we’ll heave to at night and pick
her up in the morning,” said Gamans.
On inquiry, it was found that the _Magic_ had made a fine voyage and
was on her last cruise. This was pleasant news, and word was passed
round that the men on the watch below might write letters to be
taken by the _Magic_, if we were so fortunate as to gam with her.
That evening our visitors were exultant over their successful voyage
and made us feel rather small with our moderate amount of oil. One
of the _Magic’s_ men was very boastful, and described incidents in
their voyage of an extraordinary nature, which did not lose
anything, however, from the man’s telling them. After he had pretty
well talked himself out, one of our men asked:
“What do you think your cargo will amount to? When we left port,
sperm oil was the lowest it had been for a good many years, and your
catch, I suppose, is all sperm. You ain’t got no bone, and you
didn’t go in the Arctic as we are goin’.”
“Well, our captain says it’ll bring about ninety thousand dollars.”
The man looked round with an air of triumph.
“Ninety thousand dollars is a good deal of money,” he continued.
“Yes, it is, but we took about seventy-five thousand dollars of
merchandise in a few hours, and we’ve been out from port
considerably less than a year,” observed one of our men.
The remark was greeted with a derisive laugh.
One of our visitors retorted, “It would take a good many months to
get seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of sperm oil, and a good
many weeks to try-out and stow down.”
“We’ve got a patent machine. We do it all in one job.”
“Pshaw! That’s nonsense.”
“Men are pretty smart whalemen,” continued our man, “when they can
pick out a whale that’s got a lump of gold in him.”
“You don’t mean to say——” The man stopped.
“Yes, I do mean to say that we’ve got stowed away a lump of
ambergris that’s worth more than half your catch of over three
years. Suppose we change the names of the vessels and call our ship
the _Magic?_”
The announcement, coupled with the laugh which followed, was too
much for the visitors, and the conversation turned to other
subjects—the common things which pertain to a sailor’s life, such as
the food, the weather and relations with the officers. When the
crews of different vessels meet, boasting is inevitable. Kreelman
said afterward that he never saw, at a gam, men so completely
squelched as were the sailors from the _Magic_.
We hove to that night, as the captain said, and at dawn the crow’s
nests were manned by lookouts who were instructed to seek sharply
for the _Magic_, although whales were not to be ignored. Soon a
mastheader announced the top-hamper of a distant vessel, and, before
long, the two ships were in a position to gam. The _Magic_ dropped a
boat and her captain headed it. When it came alongside he leaped to
the deck and shook hands with our captain. The two men, who were old
friends, conversed earnestly and there was something interesting and
delightful in their meeting by chance, many thousand miles from
home, on a great ocean, which constitutes a pretty large part of the
entire globe. The captain of the _Magic_ wanted the last news from
home, and our captain gave him what little information there was.
Then Captain Gamans remarked, “Now let me tell you the latest news
of this vessel. We’ve got on board a lump of ambergris that weighs
three hundred pounds, and it’s well formed, too.”
“What good luck! I never saw a piece of ambergris in my life.”
How often one man’s good fortune is another man’s discouragement!
The visiting captain didn’t feel like remaining any longer. He took
our letters, exchanged courtesies, and departed. I watched the two
boats as they put back to and reached their ship, and then, as the
breach between the two vessels widened, I was conscious of the
recurrence of the feeling I had experienced when the _Seabird_
dropped from her moorings in New Bedford harbor. The _Magic_
diminished until it was only a speck. Then I thought, “In a few
months she will drop anchor in the home port, and a large number of
the officers and crew will be once more with family or friends. Long
months must elapse before our return, and then there are the
uncertainties of our calling—disasters or a broken voyage. Oh! for
my father’s kindly greeting, my mother’s smile, and the little room
which I abandoned for the sea.”