A Whaleman's Wife

by Frank Thomas Bullen

Captain Hampden became interested in this peculiar development, and occasionally condescended to ply him with questions as to his previous experience, but all in vain. Nothing could be got out of him, and, baffled, the good old skipper had to content himself by saying to his chief officer: ‘Wall, at any rate, we seem to hev gut hold of a mighty good man.’ And gradually his quiet perseverance in well doing, the impossibility of making him angry, and the readiness with which he would always help to the utmost of his power any of his shipmates that were in trouble, won him a high place in the hearts of all on board; even the Portuguese (never very friendly to men of northern breed) could not withhold from him some uncouth tributes of affection.

And so the ship made her way slowly down to the Line, failing, however, to the disgust of the officers, to raise a whale for the first month after her departure from port. But the time was well spent, for all hands, by dint of incessant practice, were now in a high state of efficiency, only requiring their baptism of fire, if it may be called so—their initiation into the art and mystery of whale-fighting—to make them as good a crew as any whaling skipper could desire to have under his command. All bullying, hazing, and what we should call brutality, had ceased. The ship was quite as peaceful as any ‘limejuicer,’ and it was easy to see from the contented faces and pleasant remarks of the officers how well satisfied they were with the progress made by the men under their command in the direction of becoming decent sailormen.

CHAPTER VI

DISILLUSIONMENT

Perhaps it is high time that we returned for a while to the career of our heroine in her new sphere. It must be remembered that she, as so many other young women have done, took a leap in the dark, committing herself and her future to the care of a man about whose antecedents and character she knew absolutely nothing, having only in the few short days of their acquaintance seen him at his very best. But such was the glamour with which she had invested her hero that, although she was startled and troubled in mind by his brutal language and still more brutal treatment of the men under his command from the first hour that she came on board his ship, she attributed it all to the necessities of a captain’s position. Every oath made her shudder, every blow made her wince, yet she bore it all without remark, as belonging to a new order of things of which she had hitherto been entirely ignorant, and upon the merits of which at present she felt herself quite unable to give an opinion. Perhaps, had she been able to hear the remarks that were passed by the crew to one another when they thought such remarks might safely be made, she would have shuddered still more. But, poor girl, all such warning words were hidden from her, neither did she know—how could she, indeed?—that her husband bore the unenviable reputation of being the hardest skipper of all the hard-bitten crowd of such men sailing from the whaling ports of North America. Still, even her trustful heart could not fail to be wounded at the incessant cruelty which she was now compelled to witness.

The crew, driven on board at the last moment before sailing like a pack of cowed dogs, were a set of miserable ragamuffins, taken, apparently, because none others could be obtained at any price. There were only two Americans among them—two poor lads from the Western States, who had run away from home to go to sea; the rest were representatives of almost as many races as there were members. This, in itself, made for the safety of the officers—made the brutality much less likely to be resented successfully, because, among that medley of foreigners, there could be no banding together for a common purpose of revenge. Not that such an event was at all probable, because, according to the fixed plan pursued on board the majority of such vessels, the precaution was taken while yet the crew, who were nearly all green hands, were in the throes of nausea and bewilderment at their strange surroundings, to beat them, with or without pretext, until their spirits were thoroughly broken and the possibility of their retaliating was hopelessly remote. Captain Da Silva, in spite of the presence of his wife, which might have been expected to have a humanising influence over him, was this voyage more savagely brutal than ever he had been before. His four officers, who knew him well, and who were all eager followers of his plans (had to be, indeed, in order to keep their position with him), confessed one to another that the old man seemed as if he wanted to show his bride how black a demon he could be. He said, not by way of excuse, but apparently stating a mournful fact, in conversation with his officers, that in all his fishing he had never had such a crowd to deal with as he had got this time, and before they had been at sea a week he discussed with the officers elaborate plans for running across to the Azores, driving his present crew overboard and shipping a crowd of his fellow-countrymen therefrom. But this was going a little too far, for three of his officers were Americans, and they by no means relished the prospect of having an entire crew of Portuguese on board an American ship. They felt that it would be indeed exchanging the devils they knew for the devils they did not know, and, as far as they dared, made this plain to their brutal commander. And he, wise as well as wicked, took the hint, for he could not afford to lose such splendid whalemen as his officers had proved themselves to be. So, instead of working to the eastward, they shaped a course for the Line, and met with such good fortune in the shape of weather that, without the parting of a rope-yarn, they found themselves at the end of a fortnight well within the Tropics.

It was one of the characteristics of Da Silva’s career that he always seemed to have extraordinary luck. This voyage was no exception, for no sooner was the vessel shipshape, the whaling gear rigged, and all fishing preparations made, than he, taking the masthead trip one morning, sighted a grand school of sperm whales. Instantly his voice rang throughout the ship, calling all hands to action, and even those unhappy men who had had the hardest experience of his cruelty could not withhold a tribute of admiration for his wonderful powers of command, presence of mind, and exact knowledge of how to do the right thing at the right moment.

That scratch crew of wastrels, broken-spirited as they were, seemed to catch a spark of his enthusiasm, and exerted themselves in extraordinary ways in order to gain his approval.

Priscilla, utterly neglected amid this hurly-burly, sat perched on the taffrail looking with wide-eyed wonderment upon the busy scene. A thrill of terror seized her as she saw her husband, standing erect in the stern of the first boat lowered, urging his crew, with an unbroken stream of profanity, to the highest efforts of which they were capable. She could see the whales, but she hardly knew what was afoot. All that was real to her was that the ship was deserted by almost all hands, including the commander, only three or four being left to handle the sails. So there she sat solitary, alarmed, full of fears for her husband’s safety, for the result of this tremendous manœuvre, the object of which she only dimly understood. The cries from the two men at the masthead to those on deck she understood not at all, nor did she dare to ask the helmsman for any information for fear that her innocent inquiry might reach her husband’s ears later and be fiercely resented by him. But he had obtained such a hold over her that even now she did not blame him: she only felt sorry that he should not have had time (as she put it to herself) to acquaint her with the reason for his hurried departure.

Meanwhile the five boats, their crews straining at the oars to the utmost limit of their strength, sped away at right angles to the direction in which the whales lay. The Captain kept the lead, not that the men in the other boats were not doing their best, but that he had a picked crew, and that every man of them was working as if in imminent bodily fear of some terrible punishment unless he exerted all his muscular power. The oars rose and fell with the regularity of steam pistons, the water foamed past the boats, but no other sound was heard save the laboured panting of the men and the low, hissing execrations of the Captain. It is popularly supposed that when rowing boats after whales there is a great deal of shouted encouragement, either kindly or the reverse, that the men themselves are apt to break into song, as Dr. Beale permits himself to say, ‘The men sang the time-honoured whaling chant of “Away, my boys, away, my boys, it’s time for us to go,”’ but when it is remembered how very slight a sound, even at the distance of miles, will suffice to alarm the valuable quarry, it will at once be seen that experienced whale hunters would not be likely to do such a foolish thing as to make unnecessary noises, even supposing that they had breath to spare for doing so.