III
The old man paused, and stared into the fire; and when I had waited fruitlessly for another word from him, I asked:
“Is that all?”
He looked up at me quietly. “No,” he said. “No—that is not the whole of it.”
Still he did not continue, so I prompted him. “You said the whale was seen four times,” I suggested.
He nodded; and so drifted into his story again. “Aye, four times,” he agreed. “The old bull with the cross upon his skull. Four times. I’ve but told the first.”
He puffed silently for a little, shifted his great bulk in the chair, rose and crossed to the window to look down toward the harbor, and returned at last to me.
“Joan kept to her cabin much, from that day,” he said. “She kept to her cabin; and Eric Scarf did his tasks and held aloof from her. We came smoothly northward, and presently were at our pier, unloading the casks that filled our holds. Eric had slowly recovered something of the old strength and power that moved him; and though he avoided the girl, and though I could see how he suffered and what agony he was enduring, he kept a steady face to the men, and drove them as he always drove.
“Cap’n Tobbey was a quiet, stern man; but he was just. He blamed Eric for taking out the boat, but he knew the other for what it was, an accident of Fate; and when time came for the next cruise, Eric was too good a man to stay ashore. He shipped as mate, and I was second mate again.
“This time, Joan stayed behind. She had had enough of the sea for a lifetime, she told me; and from a girl, she was become a woman. Lovely as ever, her laughter as sweet and crisp as a spring wind, yet there was a depth in her that had not been there before, and at times her eyes shrank as though they gazed upon awful, tragic happenings.
“She was on the pier the day we sailed; and I saw Eric Scarf watching her with the hopeless longing in his eyes that tears at the vitals of a man.
“There was a shadow over the mate from the beginning of that cruise. Any man could see it; and the fo’mast hands used to watch him, and whisper among themselves. Outwardly he was the same; strong and quick and proud, alive, alert, his body uplifted with the energy it housed. He trod the decks lightly, he moved with the quick precision of an animal; and he plunged into his work in a fashion that would have worn another man to threads.
“A sprinkling of our old crew was aboard; so Eric’s story was no secret. But it was never mentioned by him or in his presence. He seemed to find a joy in his toil that allowed him to forget; and the man’s eyes brightened and his cheeks set in their old firm, fine lines as we drove southward. There is no better index to a man than the cheeks of him. Flabbiness of body or soul shows quickest there, and there all other vices and all virtues first appear. Eric’s face was neither gaunt nor round, but it had a chiseled perfection of contour that was like a song.
“There is a deal of superstition that hangs about the sea; and a whaler has her share of it, and more. But it is never allowed to interfere with the work at hand. And so if the men wished Eric off the ship, they kept their wishes to themselves; and if they were reluctant to serve in his boat, they hid this reluctance. For Eric was a quick man, quick to anger, with a quick fist to him. In his place, I should have moved tremblingly, fearful of a blow from behind during the watch on deck at night. But Eric strode fearlessly about the ship; and none laid hand to him.
“The sea is a grim thing, and inscrutable. No man can look out across its smooth bosom day and day, and remember the vast multitude of lives which go their way beneath that smiling surface, without a sense of mystery and wonder of it all. The sea in a storm may be terrible and appalling, when its broad expanse is cut up into myriad gulleys and mountains in which the ship is lost as in a labyrinth; but to me it has always been even more terrible and menacing when it is calm. In time of storm, its fury rages without curb; the worst is with you. But when the sea is quiet, all its energies hidden, it is like the smiling mask of Fate which conceals unguessed and unpredicted blows.
“Thus, when we sailed southward over smooth and smiling seas, I fell victim to an unrest that harassed me. I rose and looked abroad each day with eyes that searched eagerly for a threat of the fate that seemed impending; and even as I watched the sea, in like manner did I watch Eric Scarf, to discover if I could what it was that hung so threateningly over the man’s smiling head.
“If Eric felt any uneasiness, he gave at first no sign. He was as he had always been, confident, and quick, and strong. But the day came when a hint was given us, just as the impalpable atmospheric changes reveal through the glass the approach of storm.
“We had sighted whales more than once, and made a fair beginning on the long task ahead of us; and then one day in the South Atlantic, the boats were lowered for a pod that lay far off to southward. Eric got fast, and the third mate likewise. But the whale I had chosen as my goal took alarm, and whirled toward us, and then fled before our irons could reach him.
“There had been time, however, for us to see upon his head a dull scar, in the form of a cross, and I heard a cry from Eric’s boat, that was just getting fast, and turned to see Eric staring toward the spot where the old bull had disappeared.
“Then I remembered what the men had said about the whale which had stove Eric’s boat after the kill on the other voyage; and when we were aboard again, the cutting-in done, and the tryworks boiling and smoking, I was not surprised that Eric came to me.
“‘Mark,’ he whispered huskily, ‘was there a cross on the bull that got away?’
“I nodded. ‘On his head,’ I said. ‘An old scar, gouged into the blubber.’
“I saw his jaw set hard. ‘It can’t be!’ he exclaimed, half to himself. I said nothing; and he looked at me a moment later, with an agony of doubt in his eyes.
“‘Well, what of it, Eric?’ I asked, knowing, but thinking that to talk might ease the man.
“‘It was a scarred bull stove my boat—that day,’ he told me.
“‘Every old bull has his scars,’ I said easily.
“‘Aye—but—this was the same, Mark!’
“‘What matter?’
“He flushed and stammered like a child. ‘Her curse is on me,’ he declared. ‘The old bull is going to wait for me!’
“‘He’ll suffer by it,’ I laughed. ‘He’s a fat old duke, too.’
“Eric looked forward where the men were working, and looked aft, and then out across the sea; and then he looked at me at last with an appeal in his eyes. ‘Are you calling me “murderer” as she did, Mark?’ he asked.
“I shook my head. ‘She’s but a girl,’ I told him. ‘There was no need of killing the cow. But what matter for that? And the other—was no one’s blame.’
“His hand gripped my arm till I winced. ‘You mean it?’ he begged, hungrily.
“I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Forget it all,’ I urged. ‘No harm will come.’
“‘It is not that I’m afraid,’ he told me swiftly; and I saw that I had roused him as I hoped to do.
“‘Sure of that?’ I asked.
“His eyes flamed. ‘I fear nothing,—except myself,’ he exclaimed. ‘But I hear her word always; and I cannot bear it, Mark.’
“Before more could be said, Cap’n Tobbey came toward us; and Eric laughed as though at some jest of mine. His laughter was not a pleasant thing to hear, and I would have wished to reassure the man. But thereafter he gave me no further opportunity.
“I could see the thing was on his mind through the days that followed. He could not forget it; and he took to standing watch at the masthead when there was no need. I asked him once why he did this.
“‘To get the scarred bull, Mark,’ he told me. ‘That will end it.’
“‘You’ll never see him again!’
“He shook his head, and smiled grimly. ‘No fear,’ he said. ‘He’s about us.’
“And Eric was right; for the day we were finishing the trying out, the scarred bull was sighted again, this time so near the ship that his mark could be discerned through the glass as he rose to spout. Eric was aloft; and he tumbled down the rigging like a madman, and lowered; but there was a fog, and in the fog the bull was lost for that time.
“That was thrice he had been seen; and the fourth time came swiftly.
“Eric was never a man to fear or avoid conflict, even with the forces of the universe itself; and after this third appearance of the scarred bull whale, he scarce slept at all, but held himself and his boat’s crew ready for battle the day long. He was aloft from dawn till dark, endlessly scouring the seas for a spout that would reveal the creature which personified to him the thing he was fighting. He became silent, thoughtful; and strength flowed into him and nerved him to a hard and efficient readiness. He was like an athlete in training for a contest, every nerve and muscle tuned.
“We sighted the scarred whale for the fourth time on a Sunday morning; a day when the sea was just rippled by the gentlest breezes, when the sun shone warmly and comfortingly upon the world, when the boats danced upon the waves with a soothing and caressing motion. The water was blue as turquoise, and the sky above it; and the two met at the horizon with the sea’s deeper blue below the sky’s, and the whitecaps gleaming like silver in the wind.
“It was not Eric who sighted the whale, but one of the men on the foret’gallant crosstrees; and his long ‘Blo-o-o-o-o-ow’ came droning down to us on the decks and snatched each one to his post like machinery. Cap’n Tobbey turned his glass on the distant spouts, and ordered the boats away; and Eric’s hard and seasoned men made his boat swing ahead of the others instantly, and steadily increase the lead.
“There was no way of knowing whether or no this was the old, scarred bull; but his spout told us it was a right whale, and not a sperm whale. Nevertheless, either Eric knew it was his enemy he went to meet, or else he was eager to discover whether it was or no, for he drove his men unsparingly, and was more than a quarter of a mile ahead of us when he reached the monster, and ran alongside.
“Over the water came to us the sound of his shouted command: ‘Let ‘im have it!’ And I saw the boatsteerer, standing in the bow with his knee in the clumsy-cleat, put all the strength of back and arms into the stroke, and snatch the second iron and send that home even as the whale leaped forward.
“While Eric and the boatsteerer were changing places, the great whale up-ended ponderously, his flukes lifting gently toward the sky full thirty feet clear of the water, and slid down out of sight. He had sounded; and I spurred my men to harder efforts so that we might be at hand to help if need arose.
“Ahead of us, the boat lay idle on the waves. I could see Eric in the bow, his hand on the line where it ran through the notch, bending to peer down into the depths; and I could see he was putting a strain upon the line, for the bow was down and almost dipping in the waves.
“Then suddenly the bow bobbed up, the strain relaxed; and Eric bent further over in an effort to pierce the depths below him. The whale was coming up; and if by chance he came up under the boat, the fight would be done, forthwith. Eric shouted a command; and the men began to haul in the line desperately, dropping it in a loose coil astern. The boatsteerer leaned upon his oar, alert, bending to hear the word from Eric, and himself looking overside for any sign of the monster who was rushing up from the depths toward them.
“Then a shout from Eric, the boat swung around as though on a pivot; and next instant the whale breached between his boat and mine.
“There is no more splendid sight in the world than this; to see the biggest creature that breathes flinging his four or five score tons clear out of the water to hang, a black bulk against the sky, for an instant before he falls resoundingly. Imagine a leaping trout, magnify the trout’s size a millionfold or more, and you have some faint notion of the monstrous majesty and grace of the breaching whale.
“I had seen whales breach before, sometimes with terror, sometimes with wonder at the beauty of the spectacle; but when this whale leaped clear into the sky and seemed to hang for an instant fair above us, a thrill of horror shot through me.
“For as he was in the air, fair to all to see, the scar upon his head was revealed; a scar like a sunken cross, mark of some ancient wound. It was the scarred bull to which Eric’s boat was fast.
“I looked toward him, and saw that Eric had seen the scar; but Eric loved battle. He shouted to his men, and even as the great whale fell into the water again, Eric’s men hauled in till they were alongside the monster, and Eric drove home his lance.
“The whale, at the prick of steel, redoubled the furious struggle of the breach; and he rolled away and away from the boat, upon the surface, in a smother of foam and spray. The men were forced to loose the line again to avoid capsizing; but Eric himself set his hand to it, and by his own strength held the nose of the boat so near the rolling whale that when the enormous creature straightened out at last to run, half a dozen pulls brought them again alongside.
“They were in some fashion safer there than elsewhere. The harpoons had struck well behind the fin, and the whale’s rolling had wrapped the line about him in such fashion that when the boat pulled alongside it lay safely behind the fin, and yet safely forward of the flukes. If the whale rolled toward them, they would be crushed beneath his bulk; but short of such a move, the monster could not shake them off.
“And Eric was working his lance like mad. I had never seen such frantic energy. He sent the six-foot steel into the soft body again and again, not with a long shove, but with a single stabbing thrust to each attack. His target was the whale’s greatest girth, and the lower part of the body; and although the battle seemed an endless flurry and strife of bloody foam, it was only a matter of seconds before the whale’s labored spouting crimsoned—sure sign he had received a mortal wound.
“I caught the sound of an exultant shout from Eric, and his boat sheered away. The monster had suddenly halted in its flight; it lay momentarily motionless, as though testing its own strength against this attack which had pierced its vitals. Then in a desperate and panic-stricken flurry it leaped forward and away, the boat, with line running free, trailing safely behind.
“They drove past where my boat lay; and Eric turned to look toward me. He was a heroic figure in the bow of the little craft, erect and tall, his bright hair and his naked torso crimson with the flood from the whale’s bloody spout. He was gleaming wet with spray and red foam; and he waved his long lance as he passed and shouted:
“‘The scarred whale, Mark! I’ve killed him!’
“Before I could reply, he was beyond the sound of my voice; and then the great beast whirled and came back toward us. He must have seen my boat and supposed it that of his tormentor; for he charged at us, and only the swiftest swerve took us out of his path in time. Beyond me, I saw him wallow over the third mate’s boat and on; and I hurried to pick up the men in the water.
“Save for their bruises and their drenching, they were uninjured. We dragged them aboard, set a waif in the boat, tied its oars to keep it afloat, and set out after Eric and the whale. The great creature was circling in its last flurry; and as we drew near, with a tremendous spasm it threw its mighty bulk in a swift, short circle and was still.
“We drove ahead, toward Eric’s boat; and Eric’s countenance was burning with a splendid triumph. This last moment of victorious pride Fate allowed him.
“He was ahead; his boat ran alongside the huge carcass, and Eric bent over the bow with the short boat spade to cut a hole in the whale’s tail for towing it to the ship.
“The boat spade is a steel blade, razor sharp, spade-shaped, attached to a stout wooden handle. Eric leaned far out and drove it into the tough fiber of the tail.
“And then the right whale’s flukes whirled in a last, spasmodic struggle; up they whirled, and over, and down. They missed the boat by inches; but from Eric’s strong hands the boat spade was torn. It twisted in the air, its steel blade flashing crimson. Under the blow of the flukes it twisted and sang, and then chocked home. The steel struck Eric squarely in the face; and it split his skull as you split a walnut.”