CHAPTER IX
Perhaps it will be as well for me to hark back here and make some extracts from my last year’s whaling log and sketch-books, for who knows when this St Ebba will fall in with whales; in this way the reader will the sooner be made acquainted with the procedure in “Modern Whaling.”
The extracts that follow have appeared in magazines—in The Nineteenth Century, The Scottish Field, and in Chambers’s Magazine, and Badminton, but possibly the reader may not have seen them; and I am sure that the illustrations have not yet been submitted to the criticism of the general public.
The first begins one evening in June a year or two ago, when we were fishing sea-trout in the Voe at Lochend, beside our whaling station, putting in the time till our whaler came in from the outer sea.
On the evening of the second day of waiting a fair-haired, rosy-cheeked boy with great grey eyes and a ragged red waistcoat came down from the hill bare-footed and breathless, and said: “She is there!” and went off in astonishment at the unfamiliar silver. Then we got our bag down to the shore and waited for the smoke above the headland which would tell us that our little steam-whaler had been into the Colla Firth station and had left the last captured whale there, had taken coal on board, and was coming out again for the high seas.
Henriksen has heard of our arrival and, as she swings into the bay in front of Haldane’s house down comes her pram, and two Norsemen come off in it and take the writer on board.
Ah! it is good to feel again the rolling deck, on “the road to freedom and to peace,” to the open sea and big hunting, and to read in a note from the Works Manager that we have at last to act as harpooneer.
Yell Sound is calm as a mill-pond, with swiftly running tides as we go south and east past the Outer Skerries. We aim at a latitude N.E. of the Shetlands beyond the “forty-mile whaling limit” made against British whalers only.
Even with a glassy calm a steam-whaler has a rolling send. She seems to make her own swell to plunge over, but it’s a silky, quick, silent motion that, once accustomed to, you never notice; though old seamen are prostrated with it when they first experience it. Round about the islands we see many seals and an endless variety of divers and other sea-birds and some herring-hog or springers, a small finner whale (Balænoptera Vaga), and porpoises in great numbers, so we practise swinging and aiming our gun in the bows at them, against the time when we have to fire at the mighty Fin whale (A), Blue whale (B), Seihvale (C), Nord Capper (D), or Sperm (E),[3] for even Sperm and the Nord Capper we have killed in the last two years off the Shetlands, yet the Nord Capper or Atlantic Right whale, Biscayensis, was supposed to be extinct! and the sperm or cachalot is a warm-water whale and only occasionally is found as far north as the Northern Shetlands, or as far south as the South Shetlands south of Cape Horn.
The modern whale gun or swivel cannon is on the steamer’s bow and is swung in any direction by a pistol grip. It weighs about two tons, but it is well balanced when it has the one-and-a-half hundredweight harpoon in it so that a hefty man can swing it fairly easily in any direction. The difficulty for the landsman shooting is, of course, in his sea-legs—you must be absolutely unconscious of them and of the vessel’s movement, or of pitch and roll, and the wet of cold, bursting seas that may come over you at any time in the pursuit; but, given good sea-legs and indifference to a wetting, and there is nothing in ordinary circumstances to prevent, say, a fairly quick pistol shot from killing his whale, a certain amount of strength and nerve is required for the final lancing from the pram or small boat, but that is seldom done nowadays, for a second or third harpoon is usually resorted to, as being more effective and less risky.
At midnight we turn in with regret from the pink light and calm sea, for Henriksen the master, and the writer, have much to talk of about whales in other seas; but a few hours’ sleep we must have if we are to be steady in the morning.
You turn in “all standing” on a whaler, you have no time to dress when the call comes; so much time is saved out north-east. At three A.M. perhaps you tumble out, there is enough daylight to read by all night, but between eleven and twelve, and three o’clock, you are pretty safe to have a nap, for you cannot then see a whale’s blast beyond a mile or two.
We are now (five A.M.) going N.E.—a lovely smooth sea—nothing more idyllic we think than at five in the morning to be steadily pegging away over the silky swell seventy miles north of the Shetlands into the sunrise on a warm morning, watching the circle of horizon for a blow. One man is in the crow’s nest on our short foremast, another at the wheel, and you lie your length on the bridge, on the long chest used for the side lights, which of course are never used here, with glass in hand, watching. The gun is ready in the bow, and the harpoon and line are all in order. There is no hurry for a blow, you have to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day before you to hunt in, food and fuel for a week, and the wide sea to roam over in what direction you please, towards whichever cloud castle you choose, and if rough weather comes, you are confident your little ninety-five-foot whaler will ride out anything, if she is not pressed.
It is turning out a beast of a morning for whaling. Oily calm but a lumpy swell, making us crash about, and never a blow in sight; I have been handling gun for practice, an excellent opportunity in this swell from the N.W. crossing the swell from N.E., the gun muzzle yaws a bit and our feet are apt to be insecure on the little platform in the bows, and there is nothing to hold on to but the pistol grip of the gun. We pursue our north-easterly course, then go at forty-five degrees, say ten miles N., then say ten miles N.E. again, a simple way of keeping our position on the chart. Of course whenever there is anything like “a blow,” we swing about in that direction; rather a charming feeling after the usual experiences of travelling at sea in one dead straight line. It makes you feel as if the ocean really belonged to you, and you are not merely a ticketed passenger sent off by the time-table.
In the forenoon we fall in with three whalers from Olna Firth, the station of the Salvesens of Leith, and all of his had been scouting in different directions, over hundreds of miles, and not one had seen a spout, and yet where we are, there were numerous whales only a few days ago. Like trout, whales seem to be unaccountably on the rise one day, and utterly disappear the next. So we resort to music and painting. Henriksen plays Grieg on the weather-worn melodeon and the artist paints sea studies.
At twelve comes a meal, usually called middag-mad on a Norse whaler, Henriksen calls it tiffen. It is simple enough—a deep soup plate of hasty pudding (flour and water boiled), on this you spread sugar half-an-inch thick, and then half-a-packet of cinnamon, on your left you have a mug of tinned milk and water, on your right a spoon, and you buckle to and eat perhaps half-way through or till you feel tired; it is awfully good; then you eat smoked raw herrings in oil from a large tin, black bread, margarine and coffee, such good coffee. I’d defy anyone to be hungry afterwards or ill-content. Dolphins pass us and we pick up a drifting rudder. Henriksen sniffs at its workmanship and says: “Made in Shetland,” so I quote the Norse saying: “The family is the worst, as the fox said of the red dog.”
However, I suppose we will stay out till we do find whales or finish coal. It almost looks as if whales could stay below and sleep. One day’s blank waiting seems a long time from three A.M. to eleven or twelve P.M. We growl together on the bridge, skipper, self, man at wheel and the cook. There is no hard-and-fast distinction of rank on a Norwegian whaler’s bridge, and Henriksen counts up our mileage, one hundred and sixty-nine since last night. “We might be having cream and fruit in Bergen,” he remarks; we are about half-way across, and we all wish we were there. Henriksen says, by way of consolation: “Well, I was once six months whaling for Japs off the Korean coast, and I never saw a fin, and fine weather just like this”; and I tell him of our being surrounded in the Antarctic with hundreds of whales up to and over a hundred feet in length without sufficiently strong tackle to catch them; don’t we both long for one of these huge Southern fellows in this empty ocean.
At evening meal, or aften-mad, are potatoes, tinned meat and anchovies, bread, butter and coffee, and we feel vexed that we do not have whale steak and onions as we expected. The cook explains that owing to warm weather his last supply went bad, a grievous disappointment, for whale meat is worth travelling far to eat[4]; it is superior to the best beef, in this way, that after eating it you always feel inclined for more. The evening we wiled away by making an invention to kill mackerel, of course keeping a keen watch all the time for a blow. Mackerel shoals appeared in every direction in patches, rippling the smooth sea for miles. Our plan, inside the three-mile limit may sound infernal; a hundred miles out it didn’t seem so wicked, especially as we had keen appetites for fresh fish. We filled a quart bottle half full of gunpowder, put a cork and foot of fuse into it, slung a piece of iron under it, lit the fuse and dropped it into a shoal of mackerel, and sheered off. The result ought to have been lots of stunned fish. A little thread of smoke came quietly up through the falling sea—and then—nothing happened!—a faulty fuse, we supposed. We tried a dynamite cartridge and fuse later, but the fish had gone, and of course, it went off; and gave our little whaler a knock underneath as if with a hammer, then we hove to, and all went asleep, and the Haldane watched alone in the half light of the Northern night for a few hours.
At three A.M. Sunday, we were under steam again, the day very grey and the wind rising slightly from W. by S. “Like to be vind,” said a young, blue-eyed Viking with long fair hair and a two-weeks’ beard, but I doubted it; youth is apprehensive or too sanguine—age is indifferent. Which is best?
Mouth of a Finner Whale
Showing the hairy surface of the whalebone plates on the palate.
We are heading west again, east to west and back again and north and south, we go in any direction we fancy, but never a whale, so the Sabbath is devoted to the melodeon and painting. We have a book to read but the cloud pictures and their reflections always take our eyes from the print.
So we live on a whaler, in old clothes, seldom changed. I think we rather affect worn, patched clothes. Our cook or steward, a man of means, I have no doubt, in his own country, has a faded blue jersey, the darning of which must have pleasingly occupied many of the few hours of leisure he has on board, and the men, too, have most artistic patches on their clothes. They differ from their superior the skipper in that their coats are torn and darned, and his is torn and not darned. The writer’s is neither, but will be shortly, and the crease in the trousers is a memory; it goes soon on a whaler, where you waste no time changing clothes—certainly not oftener than once a week. But, though we are roughly clad, we have Grieg’s music, rye bread, and whale meat, luxuries we often have to do without on shore; the black-bread Socialists will have none of it, and the meat for which the Japs, even for the fat, pay twenty-five cents a pound.
The melodeon player’s biography would make good MS. He is young and big, weaned from shore to sea by his skipper father at thirteen; master’s certificate at seventeen; then mate on a sailing ship to the Colonies; master and gunner on a Japanese whaler; twenty pounds a month; seven pounds for each whale and all found; large pay in Norway; purchaser of his own island; farm, wife, three children; a sixteen-hand fast trotter, sleighs, guns, rifles; six months on shore; six at sea; youth and exuberant spirits and as keen about securing a guillemot for the pot as for a four-hundred-pound sterling Nord Capper.... The day passes and it seems as hopeless as ever, but I find Henriksen knows some useful fo’c’sle language for the relief of feelings; it gives a little lurid colour to the otherwise monotonous soft pigeon-grey landscape.
For hours at a time the fascination of watching the horizon for a blow is enough to keep one’s mind fully occupied, but at length and at last the writer begins to count painting and reading as of equal interest—a deplorable state of affairs. It is almost hopeless, from a whaling point of view, so we are going to give up this ocean north-east of Shetland, and go south-westwards some seventy-five miles till we see the Flugga Lighthouse, thence we will make a new departure and go and have a cast in the North-West Atlantic.
Ah! but I have hopes—there were big finners in families out there last year, at about this time they came up from the south, possibly from even south of the Line. I remember the oldest members were very exclusive, but some of the younger people made our acquaintance. There was one, an island!—may I have a shot at it is my prayer, then would there be some real interest in life for us all.
So we practically put in the Sunday without work, only watch and hope, and make a passage; but the two engineers and two boy stokers work. One of the stokers looked as if he did so hate work this morning—came on deck with his black face disfigured with an expression that meant: “I could kill anyone if I was strong enough!” He is such a sleeper that Larsen, his master, to waken him, took down the foghorn in the small hours and blared it into his ears. Henriksen in the chart-house where he sleeps, jumped at the sound, and I too, sleeping aft over the rudder, dreamt I heard the sweet note.
It is a curious little family party we are; bit by bit, I begin to know about the individual, gentle, blue-eyed Vikings, about their farms, and boats, at home; for farms and even sheep have a certain interest at sea, when you are not watching for whales.
One of them, a long, young man, with pale eyes and three or four fair hairs on his chin, has such a kind expression, and a stutter! It is the funniest thing in the world, in the beginning or the middle of a chase, if he is at the wheel, to listen to him, as he tackles the speaking tube. He spits hurriedly, then in a sing-song note, he says: “F-f-ulls-s-speed,” twists the wheel and spits again, saying some Norse expression for “Tut-tut” or “Oh, bother,” and then the same performance at “S-s-saghte” (i.e. Slowly). Finally he gives up stuttering words down the tube and resorts to the engine-room bell for signalling.
I have already touched on the interesting subject of meals on a whaler; I have known one begin at five P.M. and finish at eleven P.M., the prolongation being the result of frequent dashes from the minute mess-room to the gun platform in bows or to the bridge, in the immediate prospect of getting alongside a whale. To-day we begin our midday meal at the sweet end—why, the Norse only know!—prunes and rice, winding up with tinned herrings and coffee. After food we studied Art, did bits of sea from the bridge and pretty faces from fancy, the skipper played on the melodeon, and we exhibited in the chart-room, and each of the unshorn Vikings as he came to the bridge for his trick at the wheel or on one excuse or another came in and looked long and admiringly. Of course I had painted to the gallery—the girls had blue eyes and fair hair, the colours of birch bark, the silvery harmonies of nature beloved by the Norse and the artist.
At three in the afternoon we got sight of the Shetlands and Flugga to the west, and made a new departure to the N.W. We were only three miles south of our dead reckoning; not so bad, after several days lying hove to, and dodging about in all directions, with neither sextant nor chronometer; a chronometer gets knocked out of time in such a small craft with the shock from the gun. Towards night the Haldane’s engines slowly stopped in accordance with orders; which orders our friend the stutterer at the wheel did not know about, and his muttered imprecations on the lazy engineer stopping, as he thought, for a rest, made us all on the bridge, skipper, steward, and two of the crew, laugh till the tears came! a little goes such a long way at sea in the way of a jest (in fine weather).
So we lash the wheel to windward and roll about just over that scandalous limit line—forty miles N. of Shetland—inside of which any foreigner may whale, but we may not! We have seen nothing for twenty-four hours and the sea is as empty as the Sahara of herring-boats; the crew have three hours’ sleep.
Monday, 4th July, three A.M. A most bilious morning, enough to make a seagull ill or upset the hardiest shell-back; the world seems just a bag of hard wind and cold water, squalls, and scraps of rainbow, and tossing seas, with the eerie sough in our scanty wire rigging. We bury our bows. For five minutes our faces pour with rain and spray, the next five we dry and shiver in the cold and early sun, and vainly search the horizon for a whale. We think, almost with regret, of warm rooms in town in the South. There is no rest anywhere, aft or forward, or on the bridge, and we plug on northwards, and there’s never a blow anywhere in this useless bit of the world. It requires extreme æstheticism to see beauty in such cold water and sky, and hope to see sunshine through these squalls. We peg away in silence; yesterday, we could talk; to-day it is too cold. We bury our hands in our pockets and weep with the sting in our eyes. Yesterday, we discussed, as far as we could, the reason why whales suddenly will not rise; like trout, they do so one day and not the next, but unlike the trout-fisher, who is usually ready with a theory to explain the lethargy of trout, our Norse whaler simply says: “I doan know; der yesterday now gone; vee go vest hoondred twenty mile p’r’aps vee find ’em der.”
By midday we are thirty miles beyond the limit and are going west, and the day seems to have regretted its angry rising and is now making amends to us by putting on all its best things. The colour of the water has turned from dull lead to sunny emerald-green with belts of purple, and over it all is a lacework of lavender, the tracery of reflected sky, picked here and there with white sea caps. A jolly exhilarating sea occasionally comes on board, and rollicks sparkling round our deck, full of good intention, and we make it welcome and enjoy it, and let bygones be bygones and pretend to forget it is not always in such a jolly mood.
I knew we would get sun and warmth out N.W.; there is a space of ocean if you can only find it just between W. and E. that is always sunny and full of whales. I know it, but cannot give exact latitude and longitude; that is why it is so hard to find, but you are sure to strike it in time; so probably we will do so again to-day. We are getting the sun now, we only need the whales, and a little less sea for pleasure and comfort.
Leaving Our Two Whales at the Station
A Finner Whale Being Cut Up
Commencing to cut strips of the blubber with a flensing knife. The blubber is being pulled away as the man cuts by a chain and steam winch.
The writer and the skipper were discussing the colours of the sea; Henriksen, unlike the average whaler, does not despise things æsthetic; on the contrary, he takes delighted interest in Nature’s picture-book. As we painted, and discussed how to get this effect, and the other, there came from the crow’s nest the welcome cry of “A blast!” and the response from the bridge: “How far?” We were bowling south with a blustering, following wind, really too rough for whaling, for the sea made us yaw this way and that. However, there was no choice; there was half-a-chance and it was not to be missed. It did not turn out to be a long chase; it was a solitary finner and we swung after his first blow a mile to port and at his third blow were within a quarter of a mile. Then he sounded, and in twenty minutes came up again and blew a twenty-foot blast of steam into the bright windy air. Again we pursued and were nearly in shot at his second blast, and were following him north against the sea with the foam coming splendidly over us at every dive, making one fairly gasp with excitement and cold, but feet and legs held good; they shake a little, we notice, whilst we look on at another gunner. We were all wrong at the third rise; a mile out and very disappointed, then, to our astonishment, three minutes after appeared a blast to leeward, and the huge, plum-coloured shoulders of a leviathan coming right across our course—the same whale or another we could not tell. A turn of the engine then “Saghte” (Slowly), and we surged ahead, rising and falling on the far too big waves. Then a strange and rare sight came; owing to the position of the sun, the light shone right into the banks of waves, and inside one and along it, we obtained a splendid full-length view of the whale under the greeny water looking almost yellow and white. We have only on very few occasions obtained such a complete view of a whale, when looking down on one, but in this case, it was a complete side view. Up we rose in a thirty-foot surge, and the top of his dark shiny head appeared, up rushed the blast, and over went his enormous back. How we wished it was higher out of the water. As we plunged down a wave its back showed at its highest, and we pulled the trigger, aiming almost uphill as we plunged our bows under. It was a longer shot than usual, about forty yards and in rougher weather, and the harpoon plunged in at the centre of the target! What a boom and whirl of rope and smoke, and what a glorious moment of suspense and then intense satisfaction when the great line tautened up and began to run—some excuse for a wave of the cap.
Harpooning a Whale
But wait...! What is this? the line is suddenly slack. There was no miss—what has happened we cannot tell. All we can do is to wind up—we have lost him, somehow or other!
I know men who feel almost relieved at missing a whale, for they say they have had the hunt, which is better than the actual harpooning, and after-play, and so I have heard some salmon-fishers talk, who say they hook their salmon, then hand the rod to their gillie. Not so with the writer; one part of whaling or fishing is as good as the other to me, and to harpoon your whale and lose it is too distressing for words.
At last the harpoon comes on board—the flanges have never opened!—there is flesh on them, and a foot up the shaft—two and a half feet it had entered, and yet came out! possibly the marlin round the flanges was too strong to allow of them spreading. Possibly the explosive point made too great a hole and allowed the flashes to miss their anchoring hold. It was bad luck for us and for the whale. Our leviathan disappeared and we wound up, very melancholy.[5] A slight consolation was that a neighbouring whaler was seen to fire at another whale; we heard the boom and saw the smoke, and nothing more—she had made a clean miss! probably owing to the roughness of the sea.
View of Whale under Water