Although it would be quite unfair to imagine from the immense activity prevailing in the ship during the cutting-in that Pepe was neglected, it is certain that according to a very well understood and constantly acted upon rule in South Sea whalers, work connected with whaling takes precedence of everything else. Nothing is allowed to interfere with it as long as it is humanly possible to carry it on. Remembering the quite scanty rewards to be obtained on an average by the most ardent and successful whalemen, the absolute impossibility of any supervision by the owners for three or four years at a time, it is, I think, little short of marvellous to note the extraordinary energy and perseverance manifested by these men, of whatever grade above that of seaman, in the chief business of the voyage.
Physical injury, lack of rest, incredible toil, privation suffered are all made light of in the chase, capture, and disposal of the whale. Charges are often brought against the leaders of gross inhumanity to the men working under them in the absence of full restraint; but as far as that cruelty consists in overwork, or work under desperate conditions, I bear witness that if the sailor or foremost hand is not spared, neither do those who drive him spare themselves. The voluntary work that I have seen some of these men perform would be taken as incredible if I were to relate it, and I therefore shrink from giving instances. Besides, to the majority of those whom I hope will read this book, the whole business would be unintelligible because entirely out of the purview of a serene and quietly ordered life.
This terribly energetic method of working was a most severe lesson to C. B., hard to learn, harder still to understand. For in the gentle life of the islanders, though great efforts were sometimes necessary in an emergency, as we have seen, they had no ideas of hard work as a habit, for the love of working hard, or for the greed of gain. They were as far removed from being ascetics as they were from being hypocrites. They loved their simple pleasures and heartily gave thanks to God for them, and they could not understand why any sane person should misuse his body in order to get more than somebody else had—the last condition being an unthinkable one to them where everything was held in common. But it had not taken C. B. long to discover that in the new world of which he was now a denizen, might and endurance, as well as ability to get and keep, were the objects of praise and almost worship. That men were held in esteem, not for what they were, but for what they had, and that the easiest sneer to their lips was that a priest, a parson, or a religious man of any kind was an individual who had found that the easiest way of getting a living without work was gaining a hold over the minds of your hard-working fellows by pretending that you were in touch with the unseen world.
So he had early come to the conclusion that he must prove his manhood by his eagerness to work, his indifference to fatigue, and his ability to do all that was required of him, as well as by his passive obedience to all the loving precepts of the Gospel. And this kept him going sometimes when he would fain have sunk down with fatigue, a generous pride and belief in God’s sustaining power as being certainly no less able to uphold the Christian than the mysterious force that kept Merritt, the man of no beliefs and strangest origin, going apparently with ease when everybody else was sinking with fatigue. Nobly he sustained his part, and nobody suspected how near he was several times to giving up and declaring that whatever happened he could work no more without rest.
This present business was really the severest he had gone through, because his successful effort to save Pepe was made under the most trying conditions, every ounce of his great strength as well as his endurance of privation of air had been put forth, and then as soon as the ship was reached work harder than ever had to be engaged in. Consequently as soon as the last case had been strung up alongside by the two main tackles and the business of baling it out had commenced he was most thankful to hear the skipper say—
“Now, I’ll watch these fellows baling the case, an’ all the rest of ye scoot, get a good skin full of grub and a rest. We’ll set blubber watches at eight bells” (eight o’clock p.m.).
As they stepped away from the waist, with all its débris of quaint fragments of blubber and bone, and the swish, swish of oil surging from side to side of the deck, Merritt said to our friend—
“Christmas, me boy, I ain’t too sorry to knock off for an hour or two. I believe I’m getting old; can’t work day in and day out ’thout wantin’ a rest same as I used to.”
C. B. replied simply—