THE SCOTCH MATE'S YARN.
Could I have anticipated all that was still before me, in the form of
suffering and of peril--suffering enough to shatter a stronger frame
and shake a stouter heart than mine--I would have returned in any
vessel bound for any part of Europe, and trusted to Providence for
the means of again reaching home, rather than have remained in the
_Eugenie_.
But who can lift the veil which so happily hides the future from us?
So I turned my thoughts toward the West Indies with pleasure; I
resolved not to be an idler or loblolly boy, and was allowed by
Captain Weston to take my watches and share of deck duty with the
rest of the crew; and at intervals, I worked hard at a Spanish
grammar with Marc Hislop, who could read _Don Quixote_ in the
original, with a fluency that even my old tutor at Eton might have
envied.
We were now clear of the Channel; and, after a hard battle with the
wind and sea, we felt the long roll of the mighty Atlantic.
On the third night after my rescue, we encountered dark and cloudy
weather, with a strong gale, which set all the cabin afloat. My
watch was over, and I had just turned in, when I heard the voice of
Captain Weston who was on deck, shouting through his trumpet to
"close reef the maintopsail, hand the mainsail, foresail, and fore
topsail. Look alive there, lads," he added, "or as sure as my name
is Sam Weston, I'll give the colt to the last man off the deck!"
This threat, so unusual in one so good-natured, together with the
bellowing of the wind, the flapping of the wetted canvas, the rattle
of the blocks and cordage, and the laboring of the brig, which was so
deeply laden that every timber groaned, all gave such indications of
a rough night, that I sprang from my berth, and proceeded to dress
again in haste.
To my astonishment, at that moment I heard the hoarse rattle of the
chain cable, as it rushed with a roaring sound through the iron mouth
of the hawse hole; then I was sensible of a violent shock, which made
the brig stagger, and tumbled me headlong against the panelled
bulk-head which separated the cabin from the after-hold.
Hislop, who had been dozing on the cabin-locker in his storm jacket,
started up with alarm in his face.
"Have we come to anchor?" I asked.
"Anchor in more than three hundred fathoms of water?" he exclaimed,
as he rushed on deck, whither I followed, and found that a very
strange incident had occurred.
In the murky obscurity of the stormy night, a large Dutch lugger, in
ballast apparently, and running right before the wind, with steering
canvas set, came suddenly athwart us, and hooked the anchor from the
cathead on our larboard bow--by some unwonted neglect it was not yet
on board, nor had the cable been unbent--with her starboard
fore-rigging, and thus bore away with it, until the chain came _to
bear_, when there was a tremendous shock. Several feet of our
bulwark were torn away, and two seamen, Tattooed Tom, and an old
man-o'-war's man named Roberts, were nearly swept into the sea,
where, in such a night, and amid the confusion of such an incident,
they would inevitably have perished unaided.
Then we heard a shout, mingled with a crash upon the bellowing wind,
as the Dutchman's foremast snapped by the board, and then,
fortunately, our anchor tumbled from his side into the sea, where it
swung at the whole length of the chain cable.
We manned both windlass and capstan--got the anchor, which was
drifting, roused to the cathead, hoisted it on board, unbent the
cable, and stowed it in the tier; but long ere all this was done, we
had lost sight of our lubberly friend, who, when last seen, was
tossing about like a log in the darkness, and drifting far astern of
us. But for some defect in the pawls and notches of the windlass
collar, I am doubtful if the chain would have run out so freely; but
as to this I cannot say.
We had hard squalls and a sea that ran high until daybreak; there was
lightning too; red and dusky, it seemed at times to fill the whole
horizon. We could see for an instant the black summits of the waves
as they rose and fell between us and the glare; and when it passed
away, all again would be obscurity and gloom.
"More canvas must be taken off the brig, sir," suggested Hislop,
looking aloft and then over the side, where the foam-flecked sea
whirled past us.
"Well, in with the trysail, foretopsail, and maintopsail," ordered
Weston.
As the light of dawn stole over the angry sea, through clouds of
mingled mist and rain, the gale abated, and all but the watch went
below.
"That lugger making off with our anchor," said Hislop, "reminds me of
how, after we failed to run off with a whale, he fairly ran off with
_us_."
"How?" said I, my teeth chattering as I tucked myself into bed again.
"You must know, that about ten years ago I was an apprentice aboard a
small whaler, a ninety-ton schooner, out of Peterhead. We were
returning in very low spirits after an unsuccessful voyage, and, by
stress of weather, were forced toward the rocky and dangerous coast
of Norway, where we came to anchor one evening in a solitary bay,
among the rugged islets which stud the mouth of the Hardanger-fiord,
to repair some trifling damages. As day broke, there was a shout
raised by the watch on deck.
"'A whale!--a whale!--in the shoal water!'
"And there, sure enough, far up the bay, we saw one sporting and
gambolling, blowing and diving; and though it was a kind of robbery,
perhaps, we resolved to make a dash at him, for the place was lonely,
and not a Norwegian eye upon us--not a house upon the shore, nor a
man upon the mountains, so far as we could discern by our glasses.
"The boats were cleared, the harpoons prepared, the lines were coiled
away in the tubs, and the schooner was hove short on her anchor; but
just as we lowered the whaling-punts, down dived our fish, tail
uppermost, and then we knew that he was searching for his favorite
food, of which plenty is to be found in these Norwegian fiords."
"What is it?" said I.
"A kind of small salt-water snail, and the _medusa_, or sea-blubber.
As you have been at Eton, you must have read all about it in
_Linnæus_," continued our learned Scotch mate. "Just as the first
boat was lowered, the schooner received a shock so violent that her
masts strained almost to snapping; her bows were dragged down till
her billet-head dipped in the water, and every thing and everybody on
deck went toppling and tumbling forward in a heap about the windlass
bitts. Then a shower of bloody spray fell over us as the craft
righted again, but with such violence that the water splashed under
the counter and over the quarter. Then she was torn through the sea
at the rate of thirty knots an hour!
"We had scarcely time to form an idea, or to utter an exclamation,
either of surprise or fear, when we saw, a cable's length right
ahead, an immense whale, the same fish we were preparing to attack,
rushing through the waves with railway speed, and dragging us after
him by our anchor, of the flukes of which he had somehow run foul in
his gambols down below."
"What! do you mean to say that the whale ran off with the schooner?"
I exclaimed, in astonishment.
"Just as a scared dog runs away with a kettle at his tail. It was
one of the blunt-headed cachalots, about sixty feet long. They are
the most hideous fish of the whole whale species, having a head that
is enormously thick, and one third of their entire size, the
spout-hole being at the fore end of it.
"In less time than I have taken to tell you all this, we were dragged
out of the fiord; its rocks of black basalt and its sombre pine woods
lessened astern; its entrance seemed to close like a gate as it
blended with the coast; and the schooner, with her loose foretopsail
all aback against the mast, was dragged in the wind's eye (whales
usually swim so) for more than twenty miles out to sea. Then the
cachalot raised its mighty head about ten feet from the water,
spouted a jet of froth into the air, and disappearing, sunk, leaving
our anchor swinging or drifting in the deep water, at the full length
of the chain cable."
"And how came all this about?" I asked, dubiously.
"Incredible as it may appear, this monstrous cachalot, while running
along the sandy bottom of the bay, with mouth distended, in search of
sea-blubber, had by some means uprooted our anchor, though five
hundred weight, by his nether jaw, and so carried it off with eighty
fathoms of cable, and us at the other end of it. And now, Dick
Rodney, what do you think of _that_ for a yarn?"
"I think with Polonius, in _Hamlet_," said I, yawning, and turning
wearily in my berth, through the yolk or bull's-eye of which the gray
light of day was now struggling.
"That it is very like a whale, eh?"
"Yes."
"And so do I," said Hislop, laughing; "but though a close laid yarn,
it is a true one, nevertheless."