The proverb that a man is known by the company he keeps has no meaning at sea because your company is not of your own choosing. Detest it as you may you cannot get away from it, and although you may loathe every word you hear spoken, being human your gregarious instincts will assert themselves and fight fiercely against your desire to keep your mind and heart clean by trying to drive you into the society of those whose delight it is to outrage every feeling they think you possess of decency or righteousness. In such a situation as nowhere else in the world can a man rest upon the promise, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age.” And happy will he be if the squabbling of the schoolmen as to the authenticity of the dear words has never come within his mental purview.
I think, however, that C. B.’s plight was rather worse than that of the newly converted sailor. For the latter has been long familiar with the language, has long known the utter absence of all recognition of God as having anything to do with men’s lives, and so, though a return to such environment is utterly distasteful to him, it is not strange, does not come with so much of a shock. But poor C. B., from his earliest infancy, had been steeped in the atmosphere of prayer, of the constant invariable immanence of God and in the belief of His immediate and benevolent interference in the affairs of His children down here. He had not been brought up religiously, for the word is suspect; in fact, as most of us know to our cost, a religious man and an unutterable scoundrel are often synonymous terms. But he had been bred in the belief in the Father’s love and the unseen fellowship with Jesus Christ His Son, Himself manifest in the flesh, and that not because, hateful devilish thought, there was anything to be made out of it, any well-deserved punishment to escape from, but because it was entirely good and pleasant to love the all-Father whose plans and purposes towards them were only love and that continually.
One thing, however, came to his aid early in the struggle. It was the remembrance of a conversation he had had with his parents once upon the possibility of the islanders’ goodness being of a negative character. That is to say, they had never been tempted to do wrong, all their lives had been hemmed in on every side by right-doing and right-thinking and perhaps, he had only hinted at it, if they had been subjected to the same trials and tests as the people in the great world, they would fall, and fall lamentably. He had not claimed for himself any special strength or virtue, whatever his innermost thoughts may have been, but he had really felt at the time that his love for God was so strong and fervent that he would be glad to test it even in the fiercest fires of persecution.
Of course he did not in the least anticipate what the reality would be, no one ever does. He had strung himself up to meet outrage, in a physical sense to be treated in openly severe ways, not by covert sarcasm, persistent blasphemy and ignoring of the very right of God to interfere in the affairs of man. Now he was face to face with the reality he felt dismayed, but he went to the unfailing resource of the Christian, he claimed his dearly purchased right of direct intercourse with the Fountain of love and wisdom and was at once stayed upon the sure sense of being a child well beloved by the Father.
He strove manfully also to acquaint himself with all those details of ship work which he now found to be quite intricate and difficult. Fortunately his fine physique and utter immunity from sea-sickness stood him in good stead and he learned rapidly, so that at the end of a fortnight he began to feel capable of holding his own with his shipmates. And in consequence of the continually flung hints that he would be found out when it came to the actual business of whaling he prayed fervently for a chance to show that in this at any rate he had nothing to learn here. But as day after day slipped by and no whales appeared he had to listen to a fresh set of innuendoes from his berth-mates, who now said that their ill-luck was due to his presence on board.
So when he took his spell at the mainmast head in the crow’s-nest, be sure that his glance never missed any object, however small, that came within the limits of human sight. At last when about halfway across the Pacific it happened to be his first two hours in the main crow’s-nest, from 6 to 8 a.m. The young Kanaka who was with him was sleepy and lethargic, taking little heed of the necessity for keeping a good look out in spite of the substantial bounty offered of twenty dollars for the first sight of an afterwards captured whale making over forty barrels of oil. C. B. was watchful as usual, for so far as he had yet lived he had never allowed himself to scamp or neglect any duty. This was hardly a virtue, it was bred in him.
And consequently at this time, in the full glory of the early dawn, while his heart uplifted itself in praise to the Creator of the beautiful world, all his other senses were concentrated in sight; his vision ranged ceaselessly over every square foot of the huge circle of sea of which he was the centre. Then suddenly, from far away on the Western horizon, there arose from the clear, placid bosom of the deep a tiny puff as of smoke from a pipe. The watcher stiffened into rigid attention. Ha, there it is again! another and another, and then a creamy curdling of the blue water as if its swell had suddenly met an obstruction. It was enough. Uplifting his mellow voice C. B. sent through the quiet air the whaler’s musical long-drawn cry of “Blo-o-o-o-o-w,” the liquid vowels persisting for nearly a minute. As soon as it ceased there arose from the deck the strong voice of the skipper, who had rushed on deck from deep sleep at the first beginning of the cry—
“Where away? keep crying.”
“Bloooooow, Bloooooow,” came the response, and then with a bursting change: “There—ere—she—white waters—and Blows, Blows, Blow. Broad on the starboard beam, sir, about ten miles off—seven or eight whales, sperm whales, Blo-o-o-o-w.”