At last, one evening, when a sticky haze rose sluggishly from the fermenting sea, peopling the immediate vicinity of the ship with fantastic shapes, Peter raised his voice in an astonishing volume of sound, commanding his attendants to carry him on deck. They instantly obeyed. Very tenderly and cautiously they bore him to the top-gallant forecastle, whence a clear view could be obtained all around. Through the hedge of mist the moon was rising, a vast blood-red disc, across the face of which passed in weird procession formless phantoms of indefinite and ever-varying suggestiveness. Overhead, the lustreless stars looked down wearily out of a sky that had paled from its deep azure to a neutral tint of green. From beneath, the foul effluvia ascended like the air of a charnel-house. Even the gleaming phosphorescence in the wake of the living things below glared pale and slow. The heavy silence around was only broken at long intervals by the melancholy wail of a weary sea-bird that feared to rest on the glairy sea. On board the voice of our ancient shipmate prattled on in tones scarcely human and in language unintelligible to any of us. As the moon, rising clear of the steaming vapours, resumed her normal appearance, she shot a pallid beam across us where, like a group of ghosts, we crouched around Peter’s prone form. When the cold ray touched his face it suddenly changed, and became beautiful, but only for a moment. Then the withered, toothless jaw dropped, the dim eyeballs settled in their sockets, and Peter passed from among us. Like a voice from heaven came the command, breaking the heavy stillness, “Square away the main-yard.” As men in a dream we obeyed. But the sweet breeze aroused us as it swept away the fœtid mist in reluctant rolls and eddies. A joyful sound like the musical murmur of a brooklet arose from beneath the forefoot as the good ship resumed her long-hindered journey through the reviving sea, and the long calm was over.
Then when sail had been trimmed, and gear coiled up again, came the sailmaker softly, a roll of worn canvas under his arm, and his palm and needle ready. In ten minutes a long white bundle was borne reverently aft and laid on a hatch, where a mass of sandstone was secured to its smaller end. The skipper produced a worn Prayer-book, from which, like one determined to do his duty at all cost, he doggedly read the Order for the Burial of the Dead right through. All hands stood round in the moonlight with bare heads and set faces until the skipper’s voice ceased. Then at a sign from the mate four of us lifted the hatch to the rail, slowly raised its inner end and held it steadily, while, with a slow hiss, its burden slid into the sea and disappeared beneath a shining column of emerald green.
II
THE LOSS OF THE FIRST-BORN
She was his latest bride; the joy of his great heart as well as the flower of his goodly flock. And as he swept proudly through the foaming sea, with her graceful form gliding sinuously by his side, at the head of the mighty school in all the exultation of his overlordship of those Titans, he often sprang clear into the bright air in the fulness of his gigantic life and measureless delight of living it. After having in this way somewhat quieted his exuberant spirits, he swam sedately enough by the side of his favourite again, and resumed the serious conversation they had been having. He told her they would arrive at the island to-morrow, and she would then see what a sweet spot he had selected for the birthplace of their first-born. There was deep water right up to the edge of the widespreading reef. Shallow winding channels, that only sagacious whales, humpbacks like themselves, could find or thread amid the incessant rolling of the enormous breakers, led into a spacious lagoon behind, where there was no greater depth than six fathoms. The floor of those quiet quarters was delightfully jagged, so that she would be able easily to chafe off every last barnacle and limpet from the lovely folds of her charming breast. As for food, the place was alive with tender young squid and sea-slugs, all fat and juicy. And as he spoke he caressed her lovingly with his fifteen-feet fin that spread like a wing from the broad expanse of his side, while she gazed up at him affectionately out of the corner of her tiny eye.
When she instinctively expressed her fear of the ever-vigilant sharks, who love nothing better than a tender young calf, he comforted her by an assurance that there was little need to fear them there. If a stray one should come prowling round she was to attack him at once, as he would almost certainly be alone. Then his voice took a graver tone as his wound reminded him of the greatest danger of all, and one of which she had no experience. He told her how to some of the quiet haunts of their people came occasionally white things, with long thin legs, walking on top of the water. They were not nearly as big as a whale, but there seemed to be smaller living things in them that were terrible and dangerous. They bit with long sharp teeth, they had arms hundreds of feet long, and they knew no pity even for languid mother and new-born calf. They had killed vast numbers of the whale-folk, and the thought of his escape from them made him ache with fright, though it was so many years ago. But, happily, they could not come everywhere, and he had chosen this shelter for her because it was barred against them.
Even as he spoke, the school swept into sight of a vast barrier of coral, and, settling down many fathoms, they skirted its base rooted in the eternal buttresses of the world. Grand and awful was the view, but they heeded it not, being on business bent, with no admiration to waste on the gorgeous scene or appreciation of the untellable marvels of the deep,—matters of every day with them. Presently they rose near enough to the surface to hear the solemn roar of the league-long line of resistless breakers overhead, and, turning with them, followed their lord and leader into one of the channels he had spoken of. It wound its tortuous way for a couple of miles through the great reef, the stillness of the placid shallows strangely disturbed by the thundering return of the displaced water as the troop of leviathans paddled gently through its intricacies. At length they emerged into a wide lagoon, bounded on one side by towering masses of black rock rising tier upon tier for over two thousand feet. In every other direction the sea raised a rampart of dazzling foam, which seemed never to subside for one moment, or reveal even a remote chance of entry.
For the next two days they stayed with her, exploring every corner, finding it truly, as the Master had said, a place of ten thousand for a refuge from all enemies. At last, when the patient mother-to-be had settled upon a shady pool beneath a huge overhanging crag as her favourite spot, they all bade her farewell, formed into line and departed, leaving her to the unfailing ministrations of the good Nurse Nature, with a promise to return again in about ten days.
On the second day of her loneliness a little son was born to her, a pretty, frolicsome creature about eight feet long, his tender, shining, dark skin elegantly mottled with splashes of grey, while the tiny furrows of his belly were white as curd. And the proud mother lolled in her cool corner feeding her babe from her bounteous breast, feeling supremely happy. He was a very wellspring of joy to her, every move of his lithe young body, every puff from his tiny spiracle, giving a new pang of delight. Nor did anything harmful come near. But she never relaxed her vigilant watch; not the faint splash of a gannet after a fleeting flying-fish but sent a shudder of apprehensive energy through her mighty frame.
For one blissful week there was perfect peace. Then came a morning when the glorious blue sky grew grey and greasy, then black as soot. A deathlike silence fell. The harmless fish and other denizens of the reef crept into crevices of the coral, and all the birds fled wailing away. She was filled with an undefinable dread; a loneliness unfelt before shrank every fibre with fear. Moving uneasily about the restricted area of her shelter, her calf clutched closely under her fin, she saw spear after spear of crimson flame cleave the swart heavens, while immense boulders of red-hot rock fell in a hurtling hail around her. A seething torrent of molten lava amid a dense fog of steam fell with a deafening hiss into the sea. Desperately she sought to descend, but forgetting the bottom so near, dealt herself a fearful blow. Then in frantic fear for her youngling, she rushed, holding him closer to her breast, around the barrier, seeking the passage through which they had entered. Almost exhausted with her exertions, she found it, fled along its windings with the rock heaving and groaning around her, and at last plunged exultantly through the boiling breakers down, down into peace. But unsatisfied, still she toiled on to leave that accursed place far behind, nor rested except to breathe her offspring until she was a hundred miles away.