He became panic-stricken and fled away. But no sooner would he forge ahead a few fathoms than that line would draw so tight the pain was unbearable. He would be slowly and surely pulled back again.
This lasted for some minutes, and then his old spirit of apathy came upon him, and he allowed the line drag him where it chose, while he held it like a vice in his jaws.
Soon he found himself at the surface, and the strange creatures like the one he had eaten made a great noise. There were several flashes like lightning, only not so bright, and with the noise like thunder he felt heavy blows upon his head. He made a desperate dash away, and tore the line slack for many fathoms, but the pain in his throat stopped him from going farther. Then he was lifted slowly back to the surface again.
There he lay a huge, dark shadow under the clear water. He was growing faint and dizzy from the blows upon his head, and the last he saw of the bright sunlight was the blue water foaming about him, and a row of eyes looking over the edge of the floating thing.
They passed a bowline over his tail and hitched the throat-halliard block to it. Then they hoisted him tail first into the air, and cut the hook from his mouth. A diver cut off his tail and hung it on the jib-boom end for luck. Later they cut him adrift and he sank slowly down to the white coral below, lying there upon his side, a grisly sight. The shadow above disappeared, and then the scavengers of the reef came creeping up to do their work.
A TRAGEDY OF THE SOUTH ATLANTIC
A TRAGEDY OF THE SOUTH ATLANTIC
The whaling schooner Erin was a modern vessel. She had a little of the “old greaser” about her. She had been built and fitted out at New Bedford, Mass., the mother-port of nearly all good whaling craft, and she was manned by men who had served their time in whaling ships. Her tonnage was not over three hundred, but she was so strongly put together that she looked somewhat heavier than she really was. Her bow was like that of a clipper, and her stern had the modern overhang of a cruising yacht, but her beam was great and her top-sides bulky, showing a tumble-home like that of the ancient frigates. Therefore, she was not considered fast. Her spars were short and stumpy, and she had no foreboom, owing to chunky smokestack that arose from her main deck, over which the foresail passed. She was flushed fore and aft, save for a heavy-built superstructure over her engines, through which the smokestack protruded, and it was evident that she could stand a great amount of rough usage. Being built for southern whaling in the vicinity of Cape Horn, she needed all the strength that could be put into her, and Captain Jackson, her commander, always kept her down to a draught of fifteen feet, even when running light, to enable her to hold up to the tremendous rolling seas off the Cape. Forward, she carried a peculiar sort of cannon on her forecastle, which fired an exploding harpoon weighing a hundred pounds, heavy enough to put a quietus upon any ordinary member of the whale family. Her boats and other gear were of the usual type; but, as she was not to carry oil, either in bulk or casks, her deck was devoid of the ordinary furnace of the sperm-whaler, and her hold of the odor which comes from the usual mass of rancid blubber when packed for a long voyage from the Arctic Ocean, in vessels hunting the right whale. She was, in fact, a stanch, trim little vessel. Her crew of thirty men had been selected and shipped, and Captain Jackson cleared for his last cruise.