“So long as they see sperm whales I’m willing, or even right whale,” murmured the skipper, “for this thing’s growing quite monotonous to me. I want the boys to get some amusement too. Oh well, I must go below and fill my pipe again. However a grown man like you can get along without tobacco I don’t know.” And he glanced quizzically at C. B., who only smiled and resumed his eager watch to windward.
There was not a cloud in the sky from horizon to horizon, nor as far as could be seen was there a trace of haze. So that when the first tremulous throbbings of dawn made themselves felt it was as if an indefinite weight had been lifted, the displacement of shadow by light. And then the whole dome above began to glow in sombre tones, at first duplicated below a shade or two deeper. It was like the birth of colour, and even the eager watchers poised in mid air forgot their desire for a moment at the amazing sight. Then, as at a celestial signal, the sea-rim in the east brimmed with liquid gold, a blazing disc appeared, and it was day.
Simultaneously with the upward leap of the sun four voices rang out in the thrilling cry of “Blo-o-o-o-w.” Indeed it was a stirring sight. Far as the eye could reach from horizon to horizon there appeared to be bursting from the sea an endless succession of jets of smoke, each one denoting the presence of a monster sperm whale. Only twice in my life have I ever seen such a sight, once off the Solander Rock, Foveaux Straits, New Zealand, and there the horizon was restricted by land on two sides, and once when on a passage to Gibraltar from London in the P. & O. ss. Arabia, Captain Parfitt, who, if he sees these lines, will doubtless remember that the previous day at dinner we had had a slight controversy about the quantity of whales now to be seen at sea. I held that whales were more plentiful than ever, he asserted that they were nearly extinct, and the next morning the splendid ship steamed for an hour at sixteen knots through one immense school of sperm whales which must have numbered many thousands.
The captain only took one glance round at the mighty concourse, then shouted, “’Way down from aloft. Mr. Winsloe, we’ll lower all five boats to-day, and each one act independently of the rest. These whales are all feeding and I don’t anticipate any trouble, but the first boat that kills, stick a wheft in the whale and get back to the ship. She’ll want handling and that smartly too. Shipkeepers keep her to windward, that’s all you’ve got to do, and look out for boats coming back. Now then, away for good greasy money.”
Whirr, whirr, splash went the five boats, and as soon as they struck the water each boat pushed out from the ship using paddles only, for the whales were quite near, and each singling out a whale for themselves. Within fifteen minutes every boat was fast, that is, the barbed harpoon had established a connexion between boat and whale that would only cease by accident or design when the whale was dead. And then that placid sea became the scene of a Titanic conflict, wherein the puny men in their frail craft joined battle with the mightiest of God’s creatures on most unequal terms. To and fro they flew, those pigmy boats amidst the crowding hundreds of leviathans, who, filled with wild dismay at this sudden calamity, knew not whither to flee and moved aimlessly and harmlessly. And owing to the immense spaces in which they wallowed they were not now even as dangerous as a herd of bullocks would be in a field, for there a man might get crushed to death by accident; here, although to a novice the scene appeared dangerous, the older hands knew that an accident was now far less likely than when whales were few and far between.
To add to the confusion and apparent danger existing, the sea appeared to be alive with immense sharks, who in some mysterious way had gathered to that stupendous feast. In fact, the enormous amount of marine life peopling that remote ocean breeds a feeling of dismay in some minds, a sense of being out of place, weaklings in the midst of unimaginable forces of destruction. Not, of course, that this thought occurred to the old whalemen. They revelled in the gigantic slaughter, and incurred unnecessary danger by being unable to resist the temptation to lance loose whales passing by. The frenzy of killing was upon them, and they lunged right and left indiscriminately, heedless of consequences.
In half an hour from the time of leaving the ship Captain Taber had his whale dead, and sticking a wheft (a small flag with a pointed end to its staff) in the carcass he bade his crew give way for the ship with all speed. Arriving on board he took charge, and as there was a good working breeze he was able so to handle his ship as to keep well to windward of the whole flotilla of boats, which soon began to hoist their whefts in token of having killed each one his whale. There was no need to discriminate, for all had done well, five big whales had been killed in less than two hours; and now came the hardest part of the great day’s work, and one calling for the greatest amount of seamanship. For when once the first whale had been secured to the ship, she became sluggish in her movements, as indeed she well might with a floating mass of some eighty tons attached to her. Those boats that were farthest away, realizing the difficulty, attempted to tow their prizes, an immense task in itself, but now, hampered as they were on every side by the bewildered monsters, who wallowed aimlessly, as having lost all sense of direction or power of flight, wellnigh impossible.
Yet in some strange and apparent come-by-chance fashion the whole five whales were secured to the ship, all five boats were hoisted into their places, and the utterly exhausted men went to their food, full of satisfaction with their morning’s work. And while they fed and rested the ship was left in charge of the cook and steward, who gazed over the side at the strange scene with mingled feelings, in which real alarm predominated. Indeed, it was a sight calculated to terrify. The huge carcasses attached to the ship by hawsers floated around her like a concourse of submerged wrecks bottom up. Around and between them blundered bewildered whales lost to all their usual instincts, and all the spaces in between the living and the dead monsters were thronged with hordes of sharks countless in number.
To complete the amazing scene there had drifted out of the void great flocks of sea-birds, albatrosses, mallemauks, Cape hens, Cape pigeons, fulmars and others, which kept up an incessant screaming, fluttering, rising and falling, all ravenous and impatient for the cutting in to begin. It was indeed a wonderful revelation of the abundance of life in mid-ocean, such as is only vouchsafed to these deep-sea wanderers, the whalemen.
Two hours’ rest was allowed, and then Captain Taber, sauntering towards his mate, said—