The other boats of the fleet drove into the wind with their centerboards lowered and their sheets close drawn, waiting until the whale's efforts died, stroke by stroke. They took Stirling's signal to haul in on the line which was still fastened to Cushner's boat. Foot by foot it was drawn upward and coiled in the tubs. The whale was dead upon the bottom of the sea.
Stirling waited until the ship bore down upon the fleet and thrust her sharp prow over the spot where the quarry had sunk. He gave the order to rig the line over a yardarm and to attach it to a foreward winch. Steam was turned on and the stout hemp held, although it was drawn to pencil thinness. The carcass of the whale was sucked from the mud and silt and lifted surfaceward. Foot by foot—fathom by fathom—the line was scanned. There sounded a low cry, and a boat steerer pointed downward. Stirling and the engineers leaned over the rail of the dinghy.
They saw why the boat steerer had called their attention, and they blanched—strong men that they were. Then they stood erect and removed their caps.
Cushner's body, looped in a bight of the whale line, dangled before their eyes, all life throttled out by the whale's mad strength.
One thing showed the manner of man the second mate had been. He had drawn a long knife from a sheath on his belt and held this gripped firmly in his left hand. But it had not been used. The rope was unhacked. Cushner had preferred to go to his death, rather than sever the hemp and allow the whale to escape.
[CHAPTER XIII—INTO THE ICE]
They buried the second mate in the conventional sea manner, Marr reading the simple service from the Bible.
Stirling saw the sack-sewn body plunge into the icy waters of the Bering Sea, and replaced his cap when the last ripples had died. He turned and glanced upward at Marr, watching the skipper fold the Book and look over the rail. The whale lay alongside with only a slight hump to mark its bulk, and in the centre of this hump a harpoon had been thrust. The stout iron, of Swedish construction, was bent and twisted, and to it was fastened a bight of inch hemp which had held throughout the struggle.
Purple night was falling when Stirling had the whale's body in a position for cutting in. More irons had been driven home, lines were brought aboard and fastened to cleats, a strong hawser was passed about the giant flukes.
Cutting in a whale to Stirling was like peeling an apple. It had been one of the greatest joys the seas had granted to him. It was the culmination of months of preparation and searching. The value of a head of bone was well up in the thousands, and Stirling estimated the length of the whale to be all of seventy feet. The bone, therefore, being in proportion, he expected slabs from the upper jaw to reach fifteen feet.