And the men on deck running away with the line jerked the writhing mass out of the water up to the block, where a running bowline was dropped over its broad tail, by means of which it was hauled inboard. Another iron was hastily bent on and passed out, and the first victim had hardly been cut loose from the barb before another was transfixed in the same manner and lay struggling by the side of its fellow.
Again and again the feat was repeated, for the new harponeer’s aim seemed to be unerring, until eleven large porpoises lay in a heap abaft the windlass. And then a really wonderful thing happened. Two porpoises rose at once, rolling over and over each other as they did so, and just as they broke water the harpoon flew and pierced them both at once! Almost all hands saw the amazing stroke, and a great shout of approbation went up, for none of them had ever seen such a feat performed before.
The pair were hauled inboard and another shot made, but this time the iron went through the creature’s side, and in its tremendous efforts it wrenched the iron out of its body and fell, a torn and bleeding mass, back into the sea. In a moment the whole school rushed after it and, like a pack of starving wolves, rent it in fragments, leaping high into the air in their frenzied eagerness to get a share of the cannibal feast. So there was no more hunting for the time, but C. B.’s reputation as a harponeer was established upon the firmest basis, and only his fellow-harponeers were ungenerous enough to mutter that perhaps he wouldn’t do so well when it came to striking whales.
CHAPTER VII C. B. Justifies His Position
It was Captain Taber’s intention to proceed in leisurely fashion towards what we know as the “off-shore” grounds, by which term is meant an immense oblong tract of sea off the west coast of South America, extending for about a thousand miles to the westward and from about 50° south nearly to the Equator. This has always been a favourite habitat of the sperm whale, and although not quite so prolific as the Japan grounds or the vicinity of New Zealand, it has sometimes yielded splendid results. But it will be easily understood that in so vast an area, wherein the vision from the crow’s-nest of a single ship, or say a circle 90 miles in circumference, is but a speck and that only available by day, it is quite possible for a cruising ship to be many weeks on the ground and never see a solitary spout of a payable whale. And this too although the numbers of these creatures then frequenting a favourite haunt may be incalculable.
Few people, even sailors, can realize in any adequate measure the immensity of the ocean, the vastness of the great lone spaces of the deep. The best method I know to bring this home to one’s mind is to come up channel, one of the very busiest of all ocean thoroughfares, on a gloriously fine day and count the number of vessels seen. Of course I assume that the course is in mid-channel, and thus out of the range of the fishing-boats. The result is amazing. I have only just returned from a cruise in the Channel with the Home Fleet, when we were never more than twenty miles off shore, and I do not recall any one time that we had beside our own ships more than three vessels in sight. If then this be the case in the quite narrow waters of the greatest ocean highway in the world, what must it be where the ocean spreads from one quarter of the world to another? And no people realize this more fully than whalers, who know what it is to cruise for months in the unfrequented latitudes where their quarry is most likely to be found, and who, after a month or so’s unsuccessful search are haunted by the idea that just beyond the sea-rim, just over the edge of their little circle, there may be, most likely are, whales in abundance, but in what direction can they steer so as to come up with them?
But to return to C. B. Little by little he became accustomed to the fetid odours of his quarters, could bear to sleep down there even with his berth-mates’ pipes all going. But he felt a wide gap in his soul at the utter absence of one topic from all conversation which during the whole of his life had been ever uppermost as the most vital and interesting of all. His soul hungered for some one to talk to about God; he was horrified almost to faintness at the incessant blasphemy he heard around him continually; and, although he would not have owned it to anybody he grieved bitterly in secret that ever he had desired to leave his home and friends. And a great fear also possessed him occasionally. It was that he should grow quite indifferent to the realities of life in the shape of the things of God. Already he fancied he detected within himself a tolerance of the shameful language current about him, if only he could hear the stories it conveyed of things hitherto beyond any apprehension of his.
In fact, there was going on in the lonely man’s soul a conflict such as few of us ashore are called upon to face, a struggle with all the powers of darkness which has to be waged by every newly converted sailor when he goes to sea again, and finds no fellowship nor friendliness among his shipmates because he is suspected of being a Holy Joe. Few things try my patience more than to listen to hair-splitting doctrinal arguments, whether they be on so-called New Theology, or the cut of ecclesiastical vestments, while my mind reverts to the lonely soul in the ship’s fo’c’sle, who has just given his heart to the Lord, and has been compelled by the exigencies of his calling to go back to the foul life and conversation which never irked him before, but now is torture.