DAY DREAMS AND ADVENTURES AMONG THE CLOUDS--A CHASE, A BATTLE, AND A
VICTORY.
Early morning on the ocean! There is poetry in the idea; there is music
in the very sound. As there is nothing new under the sun, probably a
song exists with this or a similar title; if not, we now recommend it
earnestly to musicians.
Ailie Dunning sat on the bulwarks of the _Red Eric_, holding on tightly
by the mizzen-shrouds, and gazing in open-eyed, open-mouthed,
inexpressible delight upon the bright calm sea. She was far, far out
upon the bosom of the Atlantic now. Sea-sickness--which during the
first part of the voyage, had changed the warm pink of her pretty face
into every imaginable shade of green--was gone, and the hue of health
could not now be banished even by the rudest storm. In short, she had
become a thorough sailor, and took special delight in turning her face
to windward during the wild storm, and drinking-in the howling blast as
she held on by the rigid shrouds, and laughed at the dashing spray--for
little Ailie was not easily frightened. Martha and Jane Dunning had
made it their first care to implant in the heart of their charge a
knowledge of our Saviour's love, and especially of His tenderness
towards, and watchful care over, the lambs of His flock. Besides this,
little Ailie was naturally of a trustful disposition. She had implicit
confidence in the strength and wisdom of her father, and it never
entered into her imagination to dream that it was possible for any evil
to befall the ship which _he_ commanded.
But, although Ailie delighted in the storm, she infinitely preferred the
tranquil beauty and rest of a "great calm," especially at the hour just
before sunrise, when the freshness, brightness, and lightness of the
young day harmonised peculiarly with her elastic spirit. It was at this
hour that we find her alone upon the bulwarks of the _Red Eric_.
There was a deep, solemn stillness around, that irresistibly and
powerfully conveyed to her mind the idea of rest. The long, gentle
undulation of the deep did not in the least detract from this idea. So
perfect was the calm, that several masses of clouds in the sky, which
shone with the richest saffron light, were mirrored in all their rich
details as if in a glass. The faintest possible idea of a line alone
indicated, in one direction, where the water terminated and the sky
began. A warm golden haze suffused the whole atmosphere, and softened
the intensity of the deep-blue vault above.
There was, indeed, little variety of object to gaze upon--only the water
and the sky. But what a world of delight did not Ailie find in that
vast sky and that pure ocean, that reminded her of the sea of glass
before the great white throne, of which she had so often read in
Revelation. The towering masses of clouds were so rich and thick, that
she almost fancied them to be mountains and valleys, rocks and plains of
golden snow. Nay, she looked so long and so ardently at the rolling
mountain heights in the sky above, and their magical counterparts in the
sky below, that she soon, as it were, _thought herself into_ Fairyland,
and began a regular journey of adventures therein.
Such a scene at such an hour is a source of gladsome, peaceful delight
to the breast of man in every stage of life; but it is a source of
unalloyed, bounding, exhilarating, romantic, unspeakable joy only in the
years of childhood, when the mind looks hopefully forward, and before it
has begun--as, alas! it must begin, sooner or later--to gaze regretfully
back.
How long Ailie would have sat in motionless delight it is difficult to
say. The man at the wheel having nothing to do, had forsaken his post,
and was leaning over the stern, either lost in reverie, or in a vain
effort to penetrate with his vision the blue abyss to the bottom. The
members of the watch on deck were either similarly engaged or had stowed
themselves away to sleep in quiet corners among blocks and cordage. No
one seemed inclined to move or speak, and she would probably have sat
there immovable for hours to come, had not a hand fallen gently on her
shoulder, and by the magic of its simple contact scattered the bright
dreams of Fairyland as the finger-touch destroys the splendour of the
soap-bubble.
"Oh! Glynn," exclaimed Ailie, looking round and heaving a deep sigh;
"I've been away--far, far away--you can't believe how far."
"Away, Ailie! Where have you been?" asked Glynn, patting the child's
head as he leaned over the gunwale beside her.
"In Fairyland. Up in the clouds yonder. Out and in, and up and down.
Oh, you've no idea. Just look." She pointed eagerly to an immense
towering cloud that rose like a conspicuous landmark in the centre of
the landscape of the airy world above. "Do you see that mountain?"
"Yes, Ailie; the one in the middle, you mean, don't you? Yes, well?"
"Well," continued the child, eagerly and hurriedly, as if she feared to
lose the thread of memory that formed the warp and woof of the delicate
fabric she had been engaged in weaving; "well, I began there; I went in
behind it, and I met a fairy--not really, you know, but I tried to think
I met one, so I began to speak to her, and then I made her speak to me,
and her voice was so small and soft and sweet. She had on silver wings,
and a star--a bright star in her forehead--and she carried a wand with a
star on the top of it too. So I asked her to take me to see her
kingdom, and I made her say she would--and, do you know, Glynn, I really
felt at last as if she didn't wait for me to tell her what to say, but
just went straight on, answering my questions, and putting questions to
me in return. Wasn't it funny?
"Well, we went on, and on, and on--the fairy and me--up one beautiful
mountain of snow and down another, talking all the time so pleasantly,
until we came to a great dark cave; so I made up my mind to make a lion
come out of it; but the fairy said, `No, let it be a bear;' and
immediately a great bear came out. Wasn't it strange? It really seemed
as if the fairy had become real, and could do things of her own accord."
The child paused at this point, and looking with an expression of awe
into her companion's face, said--"Do you think, Glynn, that people can
_think_ so hard that fairies _really_ come to them?"
Glynn looked perplexed.
"No, Ailie, I suspect they can't--not because we can't think hard
enough, but because there are no fairies to come."
"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry!" replied the child sadly.
"Why?" inquired Glynn.
"Because I love them _so_ much--of course, I mean the good ones. I
don't like the bad ones--though they're very useful, because they're
nice to kill, and punish, and make examples of, and all that, when the
good ones catch them."
"So they are," said the youth, smiling. "I never thought of that
before. But go on with your ramble in the clouds."
"Well," began Ailie; "but where was I?"
"Just going to be introduced to a bear."
"Oh yes; well--the bear walked slowly away, and then the fairy called
out an elephant, and after that a 'noceros--"
"A 'noceros!" interrupted Glynn; "what's that?"
"Oh, you know very well. A beast with a thick skin hanging in folds,
and a horn on its nose--"
"Ah, a _rhi_noceros--I see. Well, go on, Ailie."
"Then the fairy told a camel to appear, and after that a monkey, and
then a hippopotamus, and they all came out one after another, and some
of them went away, and others began to fight. But the strangest thing
of all was, that every one of them was _so_ like the pictures of wild
beasts that are hanging in my room at home! The elephant, too, I
noticed, had his trunk broken exactly the same way as my toy elephant's
one was. Wasn't it odd?"
"It was rather odd," replied Glynn; "but where did you go after that?"
"Oh, then we went on, and on again, until we came to--"
"It's your turn at the wheel, lad, ain't it?" inquired Mr Millons,
coming up at that moment, and putting an abrupt termination to the walk
in Fairyland.
"It is, sir," answered Glynn, springing quickly to the wheel, and
relieving the man who had been engaged in penetrating the ocean's
depths.
The mate walked forward; the released sailor went below, and Ailie was
again left to her solitary meditations;--for she was enough of a sailor
now, in heart, to know that she ought not to talk too much to the
steersman, even though the weather should be calm and there was no call
for his undivided attention to the duties of his post.
While Nature was thus, as it were, asleep, and the watch on deck were
more than half in the same condition, there was one individual in the
ship whose faculties were in active play, whose "steam," as he himself
would have remarked, "was up." This was the worthy cook, Nikel Sling,
whose duties called him to his post at the galley-fire at an early hour
each day.
We have often thought that a cook's life must be one of constant
self-denial and exasperation of spirit. Besides the innumerable
anxieties in reference to such important matters as boiling over and
over-boiling, being done to a turn, or over-done, or singed or burned,
or capsized, he has the diurnal misery of being the first human being in
his little circle of life, to turn out of a morning, and must therefore
experience the discomfort--the peculiar discomfort--of finding things as
_they were left_ the night before. Any one who does not know what that
discomfort is, has only to rise an hour before the servants of a
household, whether at sea or on shore, to find out. Cook, too, has
generally, if not always, to light the fire; and that, especially in
frosty weather, is not agreeable. Moreover, cook roasts _himself_ to
such an extent, and at meal-times, in nine cases out of ten, gets into
such physical and mental perturbation, that he cannot possibly
appreciate the luxuries he has been occupied all the day in concocting.
Add to this, that he spends all the morning in preparing breakfast; all
the forenoon in preparing dinner; all the afternoon in preparing tea and
supper, and all the evening in clearing up, and perhaps all the night in
dreaming of the meals of the following day, and mentally preparing
breakfast, and we think that we have clearly proved the truth of the
proposition with which we started--namely, that a cook's life must be
one of constant self-denial and exasperation of spirit.
But this is by the way, and was merely suggested by the fact that, while
all other creatures were enjoying either partial or complete repose,
Nikel Sling was washing out pots and pans and kettles, and handling
murderous-looking knives and two-pronged tormentors with a demoniacal
activity that was quite appalling.
Beside him, on a little stool close to the galley-fire, sat Tim Rokens--
not that Mr Rokens was cold--far from it. He was, to judge from
appearances, much hotter than was agreeable. But Tim had come there and
sat down to light his pipe, and being rather phlegmatic when not
actively employed, he preferred to be partially roasted for a few
minutes to getting up again.
"We ought," remarked Tim Rokens, puffing at a little black pipe which
seemed inclined to be obstinate, "we ought to be gittin' among the fish
by this time. Many's the one I've seed in them 'ere seas."
"I rather guess we should," replied the cook, pausing the midst of his
toils and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with an immense
bundle of greasy oakum. "But I've seed us keep dodgin' about for weeks,
I have, later in the year than this, without clappin' eyes on a fin.
What sort o' baccy d'ye smoke, Rokens?"
"Dun know. Got it from a Spanish smuggler for an old clasp-knife.
Why?"
"Cause it smells like rotten straw, an' won't improve the victuals.
Guess you'd better take yourself off, old chap."
"Wot a cross-grained crittur ye are," said Rokens, as he rose to depart.
At that moment there was heard a cry that sent the blood tingling to the
extremities of every one on board the _Red Eric_.
"Thar she blows! thar she blows!" shouted the man in the crow's-nest.
The crow's-nest is a sort of cask, or nest, fixed at the top of the
mainmast of whale-ships, in which a man is stationed all day during the
time the ships are on the fishing-ground, to look out for whales; and
the cry, "Thar she blows," announced the fact that the look-out had
observed a whale rise to the surface and blow a spout of steamy water
into the air.
No conceivable event--unless perhaps the blowing-up of the ship itself--
could have more effectually and instantaneously dissipated the deep
tranquillity to which we have more than once referred. Had an electric
shock been communicated through the ship to each individual, the crew
could not have been made to leap more vigorously and simultaneously.
Many days before, they had begun to expect to see whales. Every one was
therefore on the _qui vive_, so that when the well-known signal rang out
like a startling peal in the midst of the universal stillness, every
heart in the ship leaped in unison.
Had an observant man been seated at the time in the forecastle, he would
have noticed that from out of the ten or fifteen hammocks that swung
from the beams, there suddenly darted ten or fifteen pairs of legs which
rose to the perpendicular position in order to obtain leverage to "fetch
way." Instantly thereafter the said legs descended, and where the feet
had been, ten or fifteen heads appeared. Next moment the men were
"tumbling up" the fore-hatch to the deck, where the watch had already
sprung to the boat-tackles.
"Where away?" sang out Captain Dunning who was among the first on deck.
"Off the weather bow, sir, three points."
"How far?"
"About two miles. Thar she blows!"
"Call all hands," shouted the captain.
"Starboard watch, ahoy!" roared the mate, in that curious hoarse voice
peculiar to boatswains of men-of-war. "Tumble up, lads, tumble up!
Whale in sight! Bear a hand, my hearties!"
The summons was almost unnecessary. The "starboard watch" was--with the
exception of one or two uncommonly heavy sleepers--already on deck
pulling on its ducks and buckling its belts.
"Thar she breaches, thar she blows!" again came from the crow's-nest in
the voice of a Stentor.
"Well done, Dick Barnes, you're the first to raise the oil," remarked
one of the men, implying by the remark that the said Dick was fortunate
enough to be the first to sight a whale.
"Where away now?" roared the captain, who was in a state of intense
excitement.
"A mile an' a half to leeward, sir."
"Clear away the boats," shouted the captain.
"Masthead, ahoy! D'ye see that whale now?"
"Ay, ay, sir. Thar she blows!"
"Bear a hand, my hearties," cried the captain, as the men sprang to the
boats which were swinging at the davits. "Get your tubs in! Clear your
falls! Look alive, lads! Stand-by to lower! All ready?"
"All ready, sir."
"Thar she blows!" came again from the masthead with redoubled energy.
"Sperm-whales, sir; there's a school of 'em."
"A _school_ of them!" whispered Ailie, who had left her post at the
mizzen-shrouds, and now stood by her father's side, looking on at the
sudden hubbub in unspeakable amazement. "Do whales go to school?" she
said, laughing.
"Out of the road, Ailie, my pet," cried her father hastily. "You'll get
knocked over. Lower away, lads, lower away!"
Down went the starboard, larboard, and waist-boats as if the falls had
been cut, and almost before you could wink the men literally tumbled
over the side into them, took their places, and seized their oars.
"Here, Glynn, come with me, and I'll show you a thing or two," said the
captain. "Jump in, lad; look sharp."
Glynn instantly followed his commander into the starboard boat, and took
the aft oar. Tim Rokens, being the harpooner of that boat, sat at the
bow oar with his harpoons and lances beside him, and the whale-line
coiled in a tub in the boat's head. The captain steered.
And now commenced a race that taxed the boats' crews to the utmost; for
it is always a matter keenly contested by the different crews, who shall
fix the first harpoon in the whale. The larboard boat was steered by
Mr Millons, the first mate; the waist-boat by Mr Markham, the second
mate--the latter an active man of about five-and-twenty, whose size and
physical strength were herculean, and whose disposition was somewhat
morose and gloomy.
"Now, lads, give way! That's it! that's the way. Bend your backs, now!
_do_ bend your backs," cried the captain, as the three boats sprang from
the ship's side and made towards the nearest whale, with the white foam
curling at their bow.
Several more whales appeared in sight spouting in all directions, and
the men were wild with excitement.
"That's it! Go it lads!" shouted Mr Millons, as the waist-boat began
to creep ahead. "Lay it on! give way! What d'ye say, boys; shall we
beat 'em?"
Captain Dunning stood in the stern-sheets of the starboard boat, almost
dancing with excitement as he heard these words of encouragement.
"Give way, boys!" he cried. "They can't do it! That whale's ours--so
it is. Only bend your backs! A steady pull! Pull like steam-tugs!
That's it! Bend the oars! Double 'em up! Smash 'em in bits, _do_!"
Without quite going the length of the captain's last piece of advice,
the men did their work nobly. They bent their strong backs with a will,
and strained their sinewy arms to the utmost. Glynn, in particular, to
whom the work was new, and therefore peculiarly exciting and
interesting, almost tore the rowlocks out of the boat in his efforts to
urge it on, and had the oar not been made of the toughest ash, there is
no doubt that he would have obeyed the captain's orders literally and
have smashed it in bits.
On they flew like racehorses. Now one boat gained an inch on the
others, then it lost ground again as the crew of another put forth
additional energy, and the three danced over the glassy sea as if the
inanimate planks had been suddenly endued with life, and inspired with
the spirit that stirred the men.
A large sperm-whale lay about a quarter of a mile ahead, rolling lazily
in the trough of the sea. Towards this the starboard boat now pulled
with incredible speed, leaving the other two gradually astern. A number
of whales rose in various directions. They had got into the midst of a
shoal, or school of them, as the whale-men term it; and as several of
these were nearer the other boats than the first whale was, they
diverged towards them.
"There go flukes," cried Rokens, as the whale raised its huge tail in
the air and "sounded"--in other words, dived. For a few minutes the men
lay on their oars, uncertain in what direction the whale would come up
again; but their doubts were speedily removed by its rising within a few
yards of the boat.
"Now, Rokens," cried the captain; "now for it; give him the iron. Give
way, lads; spring, boys. Softly now, softly."
In another instant the boat's bow was on the whale's head, and Rokens
buried a harpoon deep in its side.
"Stern all!" thundered the captain.
The men obeyed, and the boat was backed off the whale just in time to
escape the blow of its tremendous flukes as it dived into the sea, the
blue depths of which were instantly dyed red with the blood that flowed
in torrents from the wound.
Down it went, carrying out the line at a rate that caused the chocks
through which it passed to smoke. In a few minutes the line ceased to
run out, and the whale returned to the surface. It had scarcely showed
its nose, when the slack of the line was hauled in, and a second harpoon
was fixed in its body.
Infuriated with pain, the mighty fish gave vent to a roar like a bull,
rolled half over, and lashed the sea with his flukes, till, all round
for many yards, it was churned into red slimy foam. Then he turned
round, and dashed off with the speed of a locomotive engine, tearing the
boat through the waves behind it, the water curling up like a white wall
round the bows.
"She won't stand that long," muttered Glynn Proctor, as he rested on his
oar, and looked over his shoulder at the straining line.
"That she will, boy," said the captain; "and more than that, if need be.
You'll not be long of havin' a chance of greasin' your fingers, I'll
warrant."
In a few minutes the speed began to slacken, and after a time they were
able to haul in on the line. When the whale again came to the surface,
a third harpoon was cleverly struck into it, and a spout of blood from
its blow-hole showed that it was mortally wounded. In throwing the
harpoon, Tim Rokens slipped his foot, and went down like a stone
head-foremost into the sea. He came up again like a cork, and just as
the boat flew past fortunately caught hold of Glynn Proctor's hand. It
was well that the grasp was a firm one, for the strain on their two arms
was awful. In another minute Tim was in his place, ready with his lance
to finish off the whale at its next rise.
Up it came again, foaming, breaching, and plunging from wave to wave,
flinging torrents of blood and spray into the air. At one moment he
reared his blunt gigantic head high above the sea; the next he buried
his vast and quivering carcase deep in the gory brine, carrying down
with him a perfect whirlpool of red foam. Then he rose again and made
straight for the boat. Had he known his own power, he might have soon
terminated the battle, and come off the victor, but fortunately he did
not. Tim Rokens received his blunt nose on the point of his lance, and
drove him back with mingled fury and terror. Another advance was made,
and a successful lance-thrust delivered.
"That's into his life," cried the captain.
"So it is," replied Rokens.
And so it was. A vital part had been struck. For some minutes the huge
leviathan lashed and rolled and tossed in the trembling waves in his
agony, while he spouted up gallons of blood with every throe; then he
rolled over on his back, and lay extended a lifeless mass upon the
waters.
"Now, lads; three cheers for our first whale. Hip! hip! hip!--"
The cheer that followed was given with all the energy and gusto inspired
by a first victory, and it was repeated again and again, and over again,
before the men felt themselves sufficiently relieved to commence the
somewhat severe and tedious labour of towing the carcase to the ship.
It was a hard pull, for the whale had led them a long chase, and as the
calm continued, those left aboard could not approach to meet the boats.
The exhausted men were cheered, however, on getting aboard late that
night, to find that the other boats had been equally successful, each of
them having captured a sperm-whale.