Captain Ethan Keller, of the _Casilda_ of Nantucket, was in a very bad
temper, for in four days he had lost two of the five boats the barque
carried--one had been hopelessly stove by the dreaded “underclip” given
her by a crafty old bull sperm-whale, and the other, which was in charge
of the second mate, had not been seen for seventy hours. When last
sighted she was fast to the same bull which had destroyed the first
mate's boat; it was then nearly dark, and the whale, which was of an
enormous size, although he had three irons in his body and was towing
the whole length of line from the stove-in boat as well as that of the
second mate, was racing through the water as fresh as when he had first
been struck, three hours previously. Then the sun dipped below the
sea-rim, and the blue Pacific was shrouded in darkness.
“Why in thunder couldn't the dunderhead put a bomb into that fish before
it came on dark?” growled the skipper to his other officers, as they
sat down to a harried sapper in the spacious, old-fashioned cabin of the
whaler.
No one answered. Frewen, the missing officer, was as good a whaleman
as ever drove an iron or gripped the haft of a steer-oar, and his
half-caste boatsteerer Randall Cheyne was the best on the ship. But
there was bad blood between young Frewen and his captain, and Cheyne was
the cause of it.
“If they cut and lose that whale,” resumed Keller presently, “I'll haze
the life out of them--by thunder, I will, if I break my back in doing
it! Why, that is the biggest fish we've struck yet. If I had been in
that boat, I'd have had that whale in his flurry two hours ago. Why, it
appears to me that Frewen got too soared to even try to haul up and give
him a bomb, let alone giving him the lance--which was easy enough.”
Just as he spoke, one of the boatsteerers entered the cabin and reported
that some of the hands thought that they had heard the second mate's
bomb gun.
“All right,” growled Keller, “tell the cooper to burn a flare.”
“I guess Frewen won't lose him,” said Lopez, the first mate. “He told
me long ago that he never yet had to out, and I don't think he'll do it
now--unless something has gone wrong. That must have been his gun.”
“Huh!” sneered Keller, as he viciously speared a piece of salt pork with
his fork, “we'll see all about that when daylight comes. You'll find Mr.
Firwen and that yaller-hided Samoa buck back here for breakfast, but no
whale.”
None of the men made any reply. They knew that Frewen would be the
last man to lose a fish through any fault of his own, and only after
carefully “drogueing” his line would he part company with it, and that
only if the immense creature emptied the line tubs and “sounded.” Then,
to save the lives of those in the boat, he would have to cut.
“Guess we'll see that whale to-morrow, anyway, whether Mr. Frewen is
fast to him or not,” said the third mate to the cooper, as they met on
deck; “he's got a mighty lot of line hanging to him, and, just after the
second mate got fast I saw him shaking his flukes and trying to kick out
one of the two irons the mate hove into him.”
“Well, that is so; I hope we shall get him. The old man is pretty cranky
over it. He hasn't a nice temper even when he's in a good humour, and
there will be blue fire blazing if Mr. Frewen does lose the fish after
all.”
For four hours the barque made short tacks to the eastward, in which
direction the boat had been taken by the whale. The night was fine but
dark, the sea very smooth, and the flares which were burnt at intervals
on board the barque would render her visible many miles away, and a keen
look-out was kept for the boat, but nothing could be discovered of it.
Towards midnight the light air from the eastward died away, and was
succeeded by a series of rather sharp rain squalls from the south-west,
and Keller, fearing to miss the boat by running past her, hove-to till
daylight.
The dawn broke brightly, with a dead calm. Forty pairs of eyes eagerly
scanned the surface of the ocean, and in a few minutes there came a
cheering cry from aloft.
“Dead whale, oh! Close to on the weather beam.”
“Can you see the boat?” cried Lopez.
“No, sir,” was the reply after a few seconds silence. “Can't see her
anywhere.”
“Look on the other side of the whale, you bat!” growled the skipper.
“She's not there, sir,” was the reply.
“Lower away your boats, Mr. Bock and Mr. Lopez,” said Keller in more
gracious tones to the third and first officers; “the second mate can't
be far away, but why in thunder he didn't hang on to the whale last
night I don't know. Take something to eat with you. You will have to tow
that whale alongside--this calm is going to last all day.”
Five minutes later the two boats pushed off, and then, as they sped over
the glassy surface of the ocean and the huge carcass of the whale was
more clearly revealed, Bock called out to his superior officer that he
could see a whift {*} on it.
* A wooden pole with a small pennon; used by whalers' boats
as a signal to the ship.
Lopez nodded, but said nothing.
They pulled up alongside, and the mate's boatsteerer stepped out on to
the body of Leviathan and pulled out the whift pole, which was firmly
embedded in the blubber.
“There's a letter tied round the pole, sir,” he said to his officer, as
he got back to the boat again and passed the whift aft.
The “letter” had been carefully wrapped in a strip of oilskin, and then
tied around the whift pole by a piece of sail twine. It was a sheet of
soiled paper with a few pencilled lines written on it. Lopez read it:--
“For the information of Ethan Keller, Haser: This whale was
struck, for the sake of his shipmates' lays, by Randall
Cheyne, the 'yaller-hided Samoan,' who has struck more
whales than old Haser Keller ever saw. If Haser Keller wants
us he will find us at Savage Island, where we shall be ready
for him.
(Signed) “R. Cheyne, Boatsteerer, “Casilda.”
“Where is Mr. Frewen, sir?” inquired the boatsteerer anxiously.
“Gone for a picnic,” replied the mate laconically. “Now, look lively,
my lads. We've got to tow this fish to the ship and 'cut in' before the
sharks save us the trouble.”