THE WHITE WHATERS.
"Down with her! Hard!" came hoarsely through the mist.
An oil-skinned figure threw himself heavily upon the oar; the little craft rounded tremblingly up into the wind, hurling clouds of spray and foam aloft that were borne far away by the whistling breeze. For a moment the sail beat furiously, as if in protest at this infringement upon its privileges, then a second oil-skin—the cause of all this commotion—raised his arms, a steel spear flashed, a willowy pole trembled in the air, a quick movement, a roar of rushing waters, a shower of spray that drenched the craft, a sound of escaping steam or hissing rope, and a white whale had been struck by Captain Sol Gillis, of Bic.
Captain Gillis, as might be assumed, was not a native of the province of Quebec, but merely a carpet-bagger, who moved north in the summer and returned in early autumn about the time the wild geese went south, and all for reasons known only to himself. He hailed from down East, and voted in a small town not many miles from the historic shell-heaps and the ancient city of Pemaquid.
Our meeting with the down-East skipper was entirely one of accident. Wandering along the beach at Bic, we had come upon a boat, half dory, half nondescript, which from the possession of certain peculiarities was claimed by one of the party to be of Maine origin, and, to settle the dispute, a little house a few hundred yards higher up was visited.
It was like many others along shore,—single-storied, painted white, with green blinds, with a small garden in the rear, in which grew old-fashioned flowers and an abundance of "yarbs" that bespoke a mistress of Thompsonian leanings. A stack of oars, seine-sticks, and harpoon-handles leaned against the roof; gill-nets festooned the little piazza, while a great iron caldron, that had evidently done service on a New Bedford whaler, had been utilized by the good housewife to capture the rain-water from the shingled roof.
"Mornin' to ye, gentlemen. Been lookin' at the bot?" queried a tall, thin, red-faced man, with an unusually jolly expression, stepping out from a shed.
"Yes. We thought she was of Maine build," replied the disputant.
"Wall, so she is," said the mariner,—"so she is; and there ain't none like her within forty mile of Bic. I'm of Maine build myself," he added. "But I ain't owner. I'm sorter second mate to Sol Grillis; sailed with him forty year come Christmas. Don't ye know him? What! don't know Sol Gillis!" And a look of incredulity crept into the old man's eye. "Why, I thought Sol was knowed from Bic to Boothbay all along shore. But come in, do. I know ye're parched," continued the friend of the skipper, dropping his palm and needle and motioning the visitors toward the little sitting-room. "Mother," he called, "here's some folks from daown aour way."
As the old man spoke, a large-framed woman appeared in the door-way, holding on to the sides for support, and bade us welcome. Her eyes were turned upward, and had a far-away look, as if from long habit of gazing out to sea, but, as we drew nearer, we saw that she was blind.
Leading the way into the kitchen, which was resplendent with shining pans and a glistening stove, all the work of the thrifty but blind housewife, she began to entertain us in her simple manner, and described a model of a full-rigged ship that rested on a table, though she had never seen it, with an exactness that would have done credit to many a sailor: even the ropes and rigging were pointed out, and all their uses dwelt upon with a tenderness strangely foreign to the subject.
"And Captain Sam built it?" we asked.
"No, no," replied the old lady, turning her head to hide a tear that stole from the sightless eyes. "It's all we've got to remember aour boy John. He built her and rigged her. He was his mother's boy, but—"
"He went down on the Grand Banks in the gale of '75," broke in her husband hoarsely.
"Yes," continued the wife, "me and Sam's all alone. It's all we've got, and Sam brings it up every summer as sorter company like. Ye're friends of Captain Sol, I guess," she said, brightening up after a moment. "No?" and she looked in the direction of the captain, as if for a solution of the mystery. "Naow, ye don't tell me that ye ain't acquainted with Captain Sol, and ye're from aour way, too? Why," she continued earnestly, "Sol's been hog-reeve in aour taown ten years runnin'; and as for selec'-man, he'll die in office. Positions of trust come jest as nat'ral to him as reefin' in a gale of wind. Him and my man tuck to one another from the first."
"Then you were not townsmen always," we suggested.
"No, we wa'n't," was the reply.
"My man and Sol met under kinder unusual circumstances. Tell 'em haow it was, Sam."
The old sailor was sitting on the wood-box, shaping a row-lock from a piece of white pine, and, when thus addressed, looked up with a blank expression, as if he had been on a long search for ideas and had returned without them.
"He gits wanderin' in his ideas when he sets his mind on the '75 gale," whispered the old lady. "Tell 'em abaout yer meetin' Captain Sol, Sam," she repeated.
"Me and Sol met kinder cur'us," began the captain. "That year I was first mate of the Marthy Dutton, of Kennebec; and on this identical v'yage we was baound daown along with a load of coal. In them days three was a full-handed crew for a fore-an'-after, and that's all we had,—captain, mate, and cook, and a dog and cat. One evenin',—I reckon we was ten miles to the south'ard of Boon Island,—it was my trick at the wheel, and all hands had turned in. It was blowin' fresh from the east'ard, and I had everything on her I could git. I reckon it was nigh on ter two o'clock, and as clear as it is to-day, when the fust thing I knowed the schooner was on her beam ends. She gave a kind of groan like, pitched for'ard, and down she went, takin' everything with her; and, afore I knowed what was the matter, I found myself floatin' ten miles from shore. I see it was no use, but I thought I'd make a break for it: so I got off my boots and ile-skins in the water, and struck aout for shore, that I could see every once in a while on a rise.
"Wall, to make a long story short, I reckon I was in the water a matter o' four hours, when I see the lights of a schooner comin' daown on me. I hailed, and she heard me, ran up in the wind, put aout a bot, and Sol Gillis, the skipper, yanked me in. I couldn't have held aout ten minutes longer. So Sol and me has been tol'able thick ever since."
"Here he comes naow," said the matron, whose quick ear had caught the sound of approaching footsteps. "Sam, set aout my pennyroyal, will ye? Ye see," she added apologetically, "Sol is literary, and when he comes raound he gives us all the news, and there is sech goin's on in the papers nowadays that it jest upsots my nerves to hear him and Sam talkin' 'em over. Sech murders, riots, wrackin', and killin' of folks! If it wa'n't for a dish of tea I 'low I couldn't hear to it." And the good woman held out her hand to a burly fisherman in a full suit of oil-skins, and presented him to the visitors as Sam's friend, Captain Sol Gillis.
"I'm a white-whaler at present, gentlemen," said the captain, with a hearty laugh that was so contagious that all hands joined in, scarcely knowing why.
He was a tall, robust specimen of a down-Easter, his open face reddened by long battling with wind and weather, and shaved close except beneath the chin, from which depended an enormous beard that served as a scarf in winter and even now was tucked into his jacket.
"It's a curious thing, naow, for the captain and mate of a coaster to be in furrin parts a-whalin'; but we find it pays,—eh, Sam?" And Captain Sol closed one eye and looked wisely for a second at his friend, upon which the two broke into hearty laughter that had a ring of smuggled brandy and kerosene in it, though perhaps it was only a ring, after all.
"Kin yaou go whalin'?" said the captain in reply to a question of one of the visitors. "Why, sartin. White-whalin's gittin' fashionable. There's heaps o' chaps come daown here from Montreal and Quebec and want to go aout: so I take 'em. Some shoots, and some harpoons, and abaout the only thing I've seen 'em ketch yet is a bad cold; but there's excitement in it, —heaps of it: ain't there, Sam?"
"I ain't denyin' of it," replied the latter. "What's sport for some is hard work for others. Work I calls it."
"Wall, as I say," continued the skipper, "white-whalin' is gittin' fashionable, so in course there ain't no hard work abaout it; and if yaou will go, why, I'm goin' aout now, me and Sam. The only thing, it's dampish like; but perhaps mother here kin rig yaou aout."
Half an hour later the two landsmen were metamorphosed into very respectable whalers, and, with the two captains, were running the whale-boat down the sands of Bic into the dark waters of the St. Lawrence. The light sail was set, and soon we were bounding away in the direction of Mille Vaches, Captain Sam at the oar that constituted the helm, and Captain Sol in the bow, with harpoon at hand, ready for the appearance of game.
The white whale, or Beluga, is extremely common at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and is found a considerable distance up the river beyond Tadousac. The oil is in constant demand for delicate machinery, and Beluga leather, made from the tanned hide, is manufactured into a great variety of articles of necessity and luxury.
In appearance these whales are the most attractive of all the cetaceans. They are rarely over twenty feet in length, more commonly fifteen, of a pure creamy color, sometimes shaded with a blue tint, but in the dark water they appear perfectly white, perhaps by contrast, and seem the very ghosts of whales, darting about, or rising suddenly, showing only the rounded, dome-shaped head.
The Beluga is a toothed whale, in contradistinction to those that are supplied with the whalebone-like arrangement that characterizes the right whales: consequently its food consists of fish and perhaps squid. To enable it to capture such prey it must be endowed with remarkable powers of speed. The motor is the great horizontal tail, powerful strokes of which force the animal; through the water and enable it to leap high into the air in its gambols. The pectoral fins are small and of little use in swimming. The head is the most remarkable feature. It is the only instance in this group of animals where this organ appears at all distinct from the body. By viewing the creature in profile, a suggestion of neck may be seen, and it is claimed that there is more or less lateral motion,—that the head can be moved from side to side to a limited extent. The outlines of the face are shapely, the forehead rising in a dome-like projection and rounding off in graceful lines, so that the head resembles to some extent that of our common Balaena Cisarctica.
In their movements the Belugas are remarkably active, and are very playful, —leaping into the air in their love-antics, rolling over and over, chasing each other, and displaying in many ways their wonderful agility. They often follow vessels in schools of forty and fifty, and old whalers claim that they utter a whistling sound that can be heard distinctly above the water. The young, sometimes two, but generally one, are at first brown in color, later assuming a leaden hue, then becoming mottled, and finally attaining the cream-white tint of the adult. The calves are frequently seen nursing,—the mother lying upon the surface and rolling gently.
The Beluga has a wide geographical range, being found upon our northern and northwestern shores in great numbers. Their southern limit seems to be the St. Lawrence, and in search of food they venture up this river beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, and often in water but little over their own depth. On the western coast they also enter the great rivers, and have been captured up the Yukon seven hundred miles from its mouth. In their columnar movements they somewhat resemble the porpoise,—long processions being frequently seen, composed of three in a row, perhaps led by a single whale.
Among the Samoyeds, at Chabanova, on the Siberian coast, the white-whale fisheries amount to fifteen hundred or two thousand pood of train-oil a year. On the coasts of Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen they are captured by enormous nets made of very stout material; and the Tromsoe vessels alone have taken in a single season over two thousand one hundred and sixty-seven white whales, valued at about thirty thousand dollars. Magdalen a Bay is a favorite place for them, and often three hundred are taken at a single haul in the powerful nets. Here and in most of the northern localities the entire body is utilized,—the carcass being used in the manufacture of guano. So perfectly are the bodies preserved by the cold of these northern regions that if they cannot be removed at the time of capture they are secured in the ensuing season.
As the boat reached mid-stream, where the wind was blowing against the current, great rollers were met with, that tossed the light craft about like a ball. But this was evidently the play-ground of the Beluga, and dead ahead the white forms were seen darting about in the inky water with startling distinctness, while faint puffs were occasionally borne down on the wind.
Gradually we neared them, and suddenly a white dome appeared on the weather bow. Then came the command and ensuing scene chronicled at the commencement of this paper.
We were perfectly familiar with whaling-terms, and as the game was struck we construed Captain Sam's impressive "git aft" to mean "starn all," and even in that moment of stumbling and drenching felt a sense of disappointment in the suppression of a time-honored term. To omit "There she blows!" was enough; but to substitute "git aft" for "starn all" was a libel on the chroniclers of the "Whaler's Own Book."
There was little time, however, for regrets. Our combined weight had raised the bow a trifle, yet not enough to prevent the sea from coming in; and, as the skipper, who was laboring with the steering-oar, said, the small whaler was "hoopin' along, takin' everything as it came, and askin' no questions." Now by the slight slacking of the line we were high on a wave, the crest of which was dashed in our faces in the mad race; now down in a hollow, taking the next sea bodily and plunging through it, causing the oars and harpoons to rattle as if they were the very bones of the boat shaking in fear and terror.
In a short time she was a third full of water, and the amateur whalers were invited to man the pumps—namely, two tin basins—and bale the St. Lawrence out as fast as it came in. The maddened animal soon carried us beyond the area of heavy seas, and preparations were made for taking in the slack. The boat was still rushing along at an eight-knot rate; and, as the whale showed no signs of weakening, it was Captain Sam's opinion that nothing short of the lance would stop him.
"Jest lay holt of the line, will ye?" sung out Captain Sol, passing the slack aft, and four pairs of arms hauled the boat nearer the game, that was far ahead. At first this only spurred the creature to further endeavors; but the steady pull soon told, and, after an amount of labor that can only be compared to sawing a cord of wood with a dull implement, the white head of the Beluga came in sight.
"Steady, now!" shouted Captain Sol, releasing his hold and picking up the lance. "Now, then, work her ahead."
A final haul, and the boat was fairly alongside of the fleeing animal, careening violently under its rapid rushes; and, in response to the order "Git to wind'ard," we sprang to the weather rail. A moment of suspense, a quick motion of the lance, and the great white body of the whale rose from the water and fell heavily back, beating it into foam in its convulsive struggles.
"She dies hard," said Captain Sol, shaking the water from the creases of his oil-skin as the boat rounded to at a safe distance from the dying whale. "But," he continued, lighting a match by biting the sulphur and puffing violently at a short, black pipe, "that ain't nothing to what they do sometimes: is it, Sam?"
"I ain't denyin' of it," was the reply of that individual, who was now sculling the boat about the whale in a great circle.
"I've seen," continued the skipper, "a white whale smash a bot so clean that ye'd thought it had been through a mill; and it was a caution haow we didn't go with it. That was a curious year," he added. "Something happened to drive the whales up here so thick that the hull river was alive with 'em, and of course we was for reapin' the harvest. When we struck the rip-rap—as they call the tide agin' the wind—it was jest alive with 'em, puffin' and snortin' on all sides. I had three harpoons aboard, besides a rifle, and in a minute I had two foul, with buoys after 'em, and as one big feller came up alongside to blow I let him have it with the rifle.
"Naow," he went on, "whether they heard it or not I can't say, but I heard a yell from Sam jest in time to look and see a whale rise I'll 'low twenty foot clean out of the water. Then there was a kind of a rush, and Sam and me went down, and when we riz it was gone. The critter had hopped clean over that bot as slick as nothing. That kinder tuck the peartness aout of us, so to speak; but later in the day I got aout the gun ag'in, havin' broke the lance, and in killin' the critter she jumped on the bot, and—wall, Sam and me we lit aout, and was picked up after a spell; but that bot, there wasn't enough of her to make kindlin'-wood of.
"They ain't vicious like," continued the skipper, "but clumsy, and if yaou git in the way ye're bound to git hurted. Round the bend at Bic Island one came ashore one time and got left every tide, so she was aout of water an hour or so every day. Heaps of city folks went to see her, and one chap came along and let on haow she couldn't be alive aout of water, and poked her like with a stick. Wall, it ain't for me to say haow many feet she knocked him, but when she fetched him with her flukes it was a Tuesday, and I guess he thought he'd reached the turnin'-p'int of Friday when he hauled himself aout of the mud.
"No, they won't exactly live aout of water, but they'll stand it a like of three weeks if yaou splash 'em every hour or so. They sent one to England that way. They ain't fish. Whales' milk's good, if cream is.
"But the best bit of whalin'," continued the communicative Captain Sol, "that I ever see in these 'ere parts was done by that identical old chap in the starn there."
"When Sol ain't talkin', gentlemen," retorted the person thus alluded to, "ye'll know he's sick,"
"Wall," said Captain Sol, laughing, "I'll spin the yarn, and yaou kin go back on it if yaou kin. As I was sayin', we was aout one day I think a couple o' miles below Barnaby Island. I was a-mummin' for'ard, kinder sleep-in' on and by, and Sam at the helm, when we see a bot a-slidin' into the ripple right ahead of us, and in a minute a couple of white heads was dodgin' up a little to the wind'ard. Sam trimmed the sheet and hauled the Howlin' Mary—that's what we called the bot—-on the wind, and the other bot did the same, both of us makin' for the same spot. I see it was nip and tuck; and, knowin' that Sam was a master-hand, I says. ' Sam, yaou take the iron.' So we shifted.
"The other bot had a trifle the weather-gage of us, but both of us, mind ye, makin' for where we thought the critter was comin' up to blow, and in a minute, sure enough, up it come. This 'ere other bot shot right across aour bows; but, Lord bless ye, it would take a proper good Injun to beat Sam, for he up, hauls back, and let fly the harpoon clean over the other hot, takin' the critter right alongside the blow-hole so neat that the line fell across the other bot.—Naow, deny it if yaou kin," said Captain Sol, turning to his friend.
"Ye're a master-hand at talkin'," retorted Captain Sam. "I ain't denyin' of it; but it was luck, good luck, that's all."
By this time the white whale had succumbed, and lay upon the surface motionless and dead; and upon the boat being hauled alongside the huge creature was taken in tow and soon stranded upon the beach, where the valuable parts were secured,—the liver and blubber for the oil, and the thick, white skin that was to be tanned and made into leather or used in the manufacture of various articles.
The evening following, upon invitation, we visited the cabin of Captain Sol, who was a widower and kept bachelor's hall, so to speak. We found him seated on a keg, by the side of an enormous caldron that might have contained the witches' compound, judging from the strange forms of steam that arose from it, while the lurid flames beneath, fed by the oily drippings, lent a still greater weirdness to the scene.
"Good-evenin', gentlemen," said the captain, rising quickly as we entered. "I was settin' here in a sog like, and didn't hear ye. It's a master-night, and we're goin' to have good weather to-morrow. If yaou want to try it ag'in, ye're welcome.
"Sam? Sartin; he's goin'. Him and me's jest like the figger ten: if yaou haul off the one we ain't good for nothin'. If yaou want to see a faithful friend, jest clap yer eyes on Sam Whittlefield. And that ain't all," continued the skipper, looking around and speaking low. "Ye might not think it, for he's master-modest, but Sam's got larn-in' that there ain't many in aonr taown kin grapple with. Yaou oughter see his lib'ry. A full set o' the records of Congress from 1847 up to 1861; and he'd have had 'em all, only he jined the navy and couldn't keep 'em up. Then there's a history by Mister Parley, and a hull secretaryfull of books of all kinds. Oh, Sam's literary; there ain't no gittin' raound that.
"Yaou might hear him speak of their son John? Wall, he was a chip o' the old block. He was as wild a yonker as they make 'em; but Sam never laid the whip on him; he argued with him and eddicated him on a literary principle. When John did anything reckless like, the old lady'd fetch aout a sartin book, called 'The Terrible Suffering of Sary Perbeck,'—like enough ye've heard on it,—and I tell ye that tuck the conceit aout of him. She belonged to old Quaker stock of Paris, Maine, and she kept it up till John was a man grown and she lost her eyesight. She made a good boy of him; but the poor feller went down with the rest in the gale of 1875, on the Grand Banks. John had hard luck. The first v'yage he made, the schooner was struck by a sea on the Banks, capsized, and rolled completely under, comin' up the other side, so't the men below dropped out of their bunks on ter the ceilin', and then back ag'in as she righted.[A] The hatches were battened down, and they found John lashed to the wheel, half drowned. The next trip all hands foundered. They reckoned she went down at the anchorage.
[Footnote A: The schooner Daniel A. Burnam had a similar experience in 1877. She rolled completely over and righted herself without the loss of a man.]
"Have some beans, won't ye?" asked the skipper abruptly, as if he had been deluded by some trick into a gloomy frame of mind and was determined to shake it off then and there. "Them is the real New England beans," he continued, taking a black bean-pot with a wooden spoon from the ashes. "There's the bone and sinner of New England's sons right here. I'm master-fond of 'em; never sails withaout a pot or so. Every time I see a pot it makes me think of old Joe Muggridge, a deacon of aour taown. He beat me once years ago in 'lection for hog-reeve; but I don't bear no ill feelin'. He was deacon of the First Baptist, and captain of one of the biggest coasters in aour parts, and that fond of beans that folks believed he'd 'a' died if he couldn't have had 'em. Wall, it so happened one fall that there came on a powerful gale on the Georges, and a power of hands was lost. A good many bots got carried away from the schooners, and one dory with two men from Boothbay was picked up by one of these ocean-steamers bound in for New York, and that's the way the yarn got told. They'd been withaout food and water for three days, and were abaout givin' up; but the steamer-folks tuck 'em in and steamed for port.
"The next mornin' it was blowin' fresh and lively, and the lookout sighted a schooner lyin' to a couple of miles to the lew'ard, reefed daown close, and a flag flyin', union down,—signal of distress. Thinkin' they were sinkin', the captain of the steamer put towards her, and rounded to half a mile off and called for volunteers to git aout the bot. Half a dozen brave fellers sprang to the davits, and among 'em aour Boothbay boys. They'd been in a fix, ye see, and was eager to help the rest of sufferin' humanity. She was rollin' so that it tuck 'em nigh an hour to git the bot over, and then two men fell overboard; but finally they got off toward the schooner, all hands givin' 'em three cheers.
"It was a hard pull, and a nasty sea, but they kept at it, and in half an hour was within hailin'-distance. Then the third officer of the steamer stood up and sung aout, 'Schooner ahoy!' 'Ay, ay!' says a man in the schooner's fore-riggin', and the men see naow that she was ridin' like a duck and as dry as a sojer. 'Are ye in distress?' sung aout the officer. 'Yas,' came from the man in the riggin'. 'Flounderin'?' shouted the officer ag'in. 'No,' sung out old man Muggridge, for it was him: 'next thing to it. We're aout o' beans. Kin ye spare a pot?'
"Wall," continued Captain Sol, reddening with the roar of laughter that accompanied the recollection, "it ain't for me, bein' a perfesser of religion, to let on what the men in the bot said, but it had a master-effect on the deacon, for afore them rescuers got back to the steamer he'd shook aout his reefs and was haulin' to the east'ard.
"Wall," said the old skipper, banking the fire with a shovelful of sand, as his visitors rose to go, "to-morrow, then, at early flood, sharp."
The early flood was that dismal time when the phantom mists of night still cling to the earth, and low-lying clouds of fog cover the river, only to be dispersed by the coming day. Cold and cheerless as it was, it found us again launching the whale-boat, and, when the sail was trimmed aft and pipes lighted, we rushed into the fog and headed down the river to meet the rising sun.
The mist was so dense that only the glimmer of Captain Sol's pipe could be seen for'ard, appearing like an intermittent eye gleaming through the fog that settled upon our oil-skins in crystal drops and ran in tiny rivulets down the creases into the boat. For a mile we scudded along before the west wind through the gloom, and then a wondrous change commenced. Soft gleams of light shot from the horizon upward, the dark-blue heavens assumed a lighter tint, the pencilled rays growing broader and fusing together, producing a strange and rapidly-spreading nebulous light. The cloud of low-lying mist now became a brassy hue, seemingly heated to ignition, and then from its very substance appeared to rise a fiery, glowing mass that flooded the river with a golden radiance.
"It's a master-sight," quoth Captain Sol between the puffs, as the change went on and the fog began to break before the rising sun. "I ain't no likin' for fogs. Ye see——" But here the skipper stopped, as a peculiar sound and then another, the puffing of the white whale, was heard.
The boat was hauled on the wind, the mast unshipped, and, harpoon in hand, Captain Sol stood braced for the affray. The ripple seemed alive with the ghostly creatures, their white forms darting here and there, while the puffing came fast and furious.
"Stand by to git aft!" whispered the harpooner, and that moment, instead of a white head, the entire body of a Beluga rose in front of the boat, clearing the water in a graceful leap.
Quick as thought the skipper hurled his weapon. It struck with a sounding thud, a wing shot, and the great creature fell heavily, impaled in mid-air, to rush away, bearing boat and white-whalers far down the river toward the sea.
C.F. HOLDER.
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