As the man resumed his former position, however, the mate, after having leisurely filled his pipe, and placed it in his mouth, turned and looked toward the bay.
Unfortunately, this happened a second after Driko had pulled down the red bunting, and dropped it to the deck. As a natural consequence, Mr. Briggs, after having carefully surveyed the three naked royal masts, came to the conclusion that Bates’ imagination had deceived him.
“You thick-skinned lubber!” he muttered, in a low voice, seizing a paddle, and lifting it, with the intention of breaking it across his informer’s skull; “you empty-pated greenhorn, this isn’t the first time that—”
“There blows! blows!—there blows! A whale right ahead, sir, and two more to windward!” interrupted Harry Marline, addressing the mate, in a shrill, penetrating whisper.
Quickly, but noiselessly, replacing the paddle in the bottom of the boat, the first officer, with his teeth set, and his eyes glaring, seized his steering-oar firmly, and hissed out his orders to the crew.
“Paddle ahead—every mother’s son of you! Spring! spring! my lads—softly, but heartily—spring! It’s a bull!”
The men obeyed, and, shooting into a narrow passage, about a hundred yards from the mouth of which the first whale, a huge bowhead, was leisurely rolling and spouting, unconscious of the near vicinity of enemies, the mate’s boat darted swiftly, and almost noiselessly, upon its course, followed by the other three boats. The officers of the latter, how ever, soon became aware that it would be necessary for them to turn their attention to the whales to windward, for the channel was too narrow to enable them to pass the mate’s boat, which, on that account, would certainly be the first to reach the monster ahead of it.
But, as the harsh grating of the cedar planks against the compact masses of ice, among which the rear boats must be directed when their course should be changed, would certainly “gally” (frighten) the leviathan in the passage, the captain made a sign to the second and third officers to stop the exertions of their men for the present.
This silent mandate was obeyed, and the three boats soon became nearly motionless, their officers and crews watching the progress of the mate with breathless interest.
He was nearing the whale with great rapidity, and the huge animal, as it rolled leisurely along, with its great barnacled hump rising and dripping in the cool element, still seemed unconscious of the vicinity of foes.