CHAPTER XIII
For like the Duke of York
We have some stalwart men,
And we led them out to the High, High Sea,
And we led them back again.
New Chantey.
We began this day with a chantey—a cheerful, fine-weather chantey. There are lugubrious songs too for bad weather or unhappy crews—“Stormalong,” for instance, “Stormie,” who “heard the angels call.” I associate that slow minor air with the dreary sough and rush of wind and seas south of Cape Horn. But to-day it was the cheery
“Then blow, ye winds, hi ho, to California,
For there’s plenty gold, so I’ve been told,
On the banks of Sacramento.”
It’s ages and ages since I’ve heard it, and to-day it came off by chance with a go! We were below amongst the ropes and harpoons, Henriksen and I and some men, and had rigged a hand-pump to shift fresh water from midship tank into the steward’s, and we set to, coats off, four at a time, to pump, and I think the captain began; the fine weather we have struck must have given us spirits, for the chantey rang out all right; and the fellows on deck were quite surprised and looked down, grinning. Norsemen are not great at chanteys as a rule, but “California” is known pretty well round the world by all nationalities.
Flensing Blubber off Polar Bear Skins
Whale Underside Up in Tow Alongside
The ribbed white of their undersides is like the white of a kid glove.
The origin of the chapter heading is perhaps obscure. It was inspired by the fact that we reached the outer ocean, returned to Colla Firth and shelter in the evening, and dropped anchor in the twilight opposite the Norwegian wooden-painted buildings of the Alexandra Whale Company, which all the workers have left for the winter, the Norsemen to Norway, and the Shetlanders to their crofts, like bees to enjoy their summer earnings through the winter.
The morning was perfect so we weighed anchor about five A.M. As we passed Haldane’s house at Lochend, the black blinds were still down and the sun shining on its white wall, so we did not as much as blow our horn to disturb its inmates but hied away for the open sea again, past these Ramna Stacks and held a course N.W. For about ten miles we kept this course till we got to the forty and sixty fathom soundings that mark the change to deep water, then turned S.W., gradually leaving Shetland below the horizon with Foula, the outlying craggy island showing grey against a pale rib of salmon-coloured sky beneath the grey pigeon-coloured clouds. And for once in a way we have what may be called a smooth sea, at least there’s no white water, and alas and alas, no whales nor any sign of life in the ocean. Evidently the season is over, the Gulf Stream has been switched off.
There is still so much to do on board that there is barely time for disappointment. The whales must be somewhere, so why not farther down our Scottish coast; so we keep going south, one man only watching, all the rest of us busy with a variety of work—the artist, the first mate and a hand laying down a flooring on our main-deck or waist, made of planks we brought from the wood behind Henriksen’s house on Nottero. This is to save our permanent deck, for when the whales do come they will have their dark, silky skin and firm, white fat hauled up on to this from their bodies in the sea, and there will be so much cutting and chopping and hauling wire ropes and iron flinching blocks across this waist or main-deck that our permanent deck would suffer in appearance were it not protected. And the smith is tackling a piece of ironwork, with the bos’n as assistant, making clamps to hold chock blocks for the new scuttle hatch or companion we have made through the big hatch over the main hold. This being just small enough to admit a man, we can leave it open in bad weather for access to the hold.
The captain attends to a thousand and one things without pretending to do so, leaving as much as possible to the mate and crew, and has a two hours’ sleep, preparatory to a night on the bridge, and works out the course on his chart. We are aiming—failing whales—at Tobermory, and at odd intervals we talk whales and prospects, about this kind of whale and the other, and the sperm in particular, that we are now setting our hopes on meeting; as the finner has not put in an appearance, the valuable sperm compared to the less valuable but infinitely stronger fighting finners. Also Henriksen looks on a little as I paint, for he is just as interested in my painting as I am interested in his pricking out our course on the face of one of those most suggestive pictures, the Admiralty charts. There is nothing more fascinating, even thrilling, to my mind than picking up this light or the other as we do to-night, and verifying it on the chart in the cabin.
Noaphead Light on the Orkneys is the first we will pick up, we should see that soon after (or before) picking up the “three flashes in quick succession” from that lonely skerry, Sule Skerry, between Orkney and Cape Wrath. Its guiding circle of radiance intersects the circle of the rays from Cape Wrath. Cape Wrath is white and red alternately. Then we will hie for the Butt of Lewis, weather permitting. St Ebba give us better weather than we met there in the Balæna, a whaling barque of the old style out from Dundee uncountable years ago—we were twenty days hove to in a wicked gale with broken bulwarks, spars, and tattered sails—twenty days between Cape Wrath and the south-west of Ireland—bad spaewives did it! Now, holy St Ebba, hear our prayer. Dear saint, give us gentle winds and fair, and for what we are about to receive in the way of whales or fine weather we will be most truly thankful.
This is the first mate’s birthday—he is certificated as master and has attained the ripe age of twenty-two, quite an advanced age for many a Norwegian master, and we celebrate his birthday and incidentally our first really fine day since we left Norway. Our skipper believes in making small celebrations on shipboard. He likes to get good work from the men and be friends at the same time, a perfectly possible attainment. All hands get a small bottle of light beer, and the steward (cook, he would be called with us) makes pastry for all hands. We begin our festive meal with cormorant fricassee, you could not escape the smell anywhere aft this afternoon. I can’t quite rise to cormorant; penguins and several other sea-birds I like; but there’s no accounting for taste, and our mechanicien or engineer, a Swede, simply dotes on cormorants, and regrets leaving the Shetlands and the endless supply of these hard-featured birds. Then we have the pastry, and such pastry I have never seen equalled; certainly our cook is more than steward, he is a chef! And the bottle of brandy is brought forth (out of bond, one shilling a bottle and not bad at that). Each of us has a little, and it is sent to the fo’c’sle and comes back still half full—one bottle for fifteen men and the bottle not empty! and a box of cigars goes from mess-room to fo’c’sle likewise, and comes back half full, so our crew cannot be said to be extravagant; then, to complete the celebration, Nansen, the steward, sits on the main-hatch and plays the ship’s melodeon, and Rolf, the youngest on board, dances a pas seul on our new floor—a dance between a mazurka and hornpipe, with two or three clean somersaults thrown in. He is a pretty dancer, and of good family, I am told, too lively for home, just the sort you need on board ship. He and the steward of the pale face and yellow hair danced together. I could just distinguish them in the dark from the bridge against the light planks of our newly laid working deck. For a moment, whilst the skipper played, my heart stood still! for the steward nearly went over our low bulwarks at a roll from the swell—his exquisite pastry flashed across my mind.
We saw Sule skerry twinkling in the night a few miles to starboard. I would like to make a visit there, it would be such a soothing place to live on, the solitude must be so emphatic, for it is equidistant from Orkney and Cape Wrath, and out of sight of either. In the morning the light on Cape Wrath went out and we saw the beetling cliffs backed with high, bare ridges of the Sutherland mountains against a yellow sunrise. On a soft, rolling, rippling sea and far off, a mere speck beneath the cliffs, we made out a fellow-whaler (only a steamer), with its long trail of smoke beneath the cliff steaming east, and we thought she was the Hebrides, one of the steamers of a small company, the Blacksod Bay Company in Ireland, which I wish well. Evidently it was on its road to Norway, so we gathered that whales must be scarce and the weather probably bad on the Irish coast.
Our saint has answered our prayer, and instead of the wild weather we associate with these parts we go comfortably along at eight knots, with the engine singing a soft song to its gentle beat. What a difference between the lot of the motor engineer at sea and the steamer’s engineer, the motor man in a pleasantly warm, spacious room, the other in cramped space with considerable heat, and the clanging of stokers’ shovels.
Past the E. of Lewis we motor steadily. One killer or grampus we saw, and about a dozen dolphins in the three days’ run south, and very few birds. So we felt confirmed in our belief that we should proceed to Southern Seas now, instead of waiting for whales in northern latitudes. Evidently the season here is over.
Now we have Neist Light and its double flash, to port, and we pass Dunvegan and wish we could see the familiar mountains of Skye. But the light is all we have, and welcome it is; past it a little and we will have the light on Hyskeir Rock to guide us on our way till we pick up Colonsay and our old friend Ardnamurchan, and the light on its point where the white-tailed eagles used to breed.
Burns said: “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.” If he had been picking up lights from Flugga on Ultima Thule down our intricate west coast, with its tides and islands, on a dark night, he would have held his breath with the thought of all the human effort and forethought these lighthouses express of man’s humanity to man—to our countrymen, to my Norse companions, to the Russian trader, whose light we see to-night not far astern; nation to nation offering kindly guidance and warning. So we have various colours in the night, the pale flashing lighthouse we steer to, and two golden eyes from our galley casting patches of light on deck, and on either side of us a phosphorescent Milky Way with occasionally vivid flashes as we turn over a wave in the smooth water.
But it is to bed, to bed, for to-morrow we must be astir early, to meet relatives in Tobermory, and anchor in its circular bay, where we have so often anchored when we were young and unspoiled, and Mull to Ardnamurchan in a dinghy seemed a long way, and whaling was as a tale that is told.
At four o’clock in the morning we pass Hyskeir Rocks, pass them three cables to starboard. It is dark and hazy but their light sweeps across our deck: soon the lights on Ardnamurchan and Coll greet us; and as sea and mountain and air faintly separate, we pass the light on the point and pick up Kilchoan, and then the Tobermory Light.
Ardnamurchan shows a rugged, mountainous outline against the morning sky, and to a stranger coming from the sea, picking up the lights as he goes, it seems inhospitable. But to the writer it recalls some similar mornings—after smoky town down south—coming up for winter shooting. What glens there are of birches for black game, corries for deer, lochs for little brown trout and burns for sea-trout! My thanks to relatives for the free run we had when we were young—Ardnamurchan Point to Glen Borrodale, what a playground! North beyond the point and the hills above Kilchoan we see the hills above Loch Aylort and the coast of Morar, “Blessed Morar,” perhaps the most beautiful spot of the most beautiful country in the world. Where else do you find stone pines, in deep heather growing right down to a white coral strand, and glass-green sea-water. Then Drimnin and Glen Morven appear west and south of Ardnamurchan, full of memories of relations, of piping, singing, hunting and sailing.
The relatives, we presume, are all asleep now, so we won’t awake them, as we pass, with repeated blasts on our foghorn, as we half thought of doing—no, we will later rouse them up with a Fiery Cross reply-paid telegram from Tobermory to come across the sound to see this newest whaler. Possibly we will, after considering mundane matters, such as potatoes and marmalade for all hands, drop anchor at Drimnin or Glen Morven and ask the relatives to step off and see our wonders on board ship, but the anchorage at neither of the places is of the very best and Tobermory is perfect.
My Norse friends fell in love with Drimnin and Tobermory and its round sheltered bay at first sight: we had only too short a stay, for a wire told us my cousin, Mr C. H. Urmston, a fellow-director in our Company, would await me in Oban, so we up anchored, went over to Morven and dipped our flag and blew the horn opposite Drimnin, and passed the Urmstons’ house, Glen Morven, in silence, for we hear it is let to a stranger from the south, and down the familiar Sound of Mull we proceeded on this lovely summer afternoon to the Great Oban.
By the way, I met two men interested in whaling in Tobermory! When your mind runs on a subject, is it not odd how many people you meet who also take an interest in same? This man is Yule by name; we met on the subject of bagpipes; piping is the best bond and introduction to the best men! So with two interests, whaling and piping, you at once get very intimate. He came from the east coast—I never met a Highlandman whaler, and not often a sailor (they are generally Captains or Chiefs, they have brains).
“Did you ever hear the name of Yule as a whaler?” he said; and I replied I’d heard more stories about Yule and whales and white bears and Arctic jokes and adventures from Dundee to north of the Pole than of any other man alive or dead. “Well,” he said, “that was my grandfather,” and he referred me to his father up the close, to verify the grandfather’s exploits. So if anyone who reads this wishes yarns true and hair-curling about Greenland’s icy mountains, etc., let him call at Tobermory, on Yule senior. No. 51, the third close past the post office.
A fair lady at Tobermory graced our vessel with a fleeting visit. Miss Sheila Allan, of the famous line of that name. She rowed from Aros Castle in her dinghy and sprang on board, leaving her collie in charge, overhauled our strange craft, fore and aft, sprang into the dinghy again, a mere cockle-shell, and rowed off again half-a-mile to windward, against a fresh breeze, as if it was the most ordinary everyday thing for one of our ladies to do; many a fair Brunhilda could have done the same. I did not tell my Norse friends that she was at all exceptional, so our Norsemen have formed a lofty idea of Scotswomen as mariners. I wished they could have seen her, as I have, out on the Sound of Mull in wind and rain, fair hair flying, yellow oilskins dripping, racing her own cutter, three reefs down, through the spray for the Tobermory Cup.