“I scarce knew what to think of this, as the man spoke quite seriously, glancing warily round the poop, and dropping his voice to a whisper, which had something of genuine awe in its cadence.
“ ‘Come, come, Mr. Parker,’ said I, ‘no ghosts, if you please. We will leave them to the old carpenter and his crony. I should like to hear, though, how you lost that boat’s crew.’
“ ‘Well, sir,’ he replied, doggedly, ‘as you please—but as for the spirit—’
“ ‘Pooh, pooh, man!—never mind that!—tell me how you came to lose the boat. We will have the spirit after supper, if you insist on it.’
“ ‘Why,’ said he, with a sort of sigh, dropping the ghost with evident reluctance, ‘I had to cut my line in that same squall, for it was in running down to pick up my boat that the ship lost sight of the mate.
“ ‘You see, sir,’ continued he, after a pause, during which he looked me full in the face in a half shrewd, half wistful way, as I thought, ‘it is best to begin at the right end of a tangled yarn, if you want to unravel it. Some of the boat’s crew-watch heard a splash under the counter one moonlight night in the Gulf, and when the rest opened their eyes and went aft, the poop was empty, and the lady not to be found in the ship. One fellow saw her standing by the head of the after-cabin stairs, when he went aft to strike the bell a moment before—another heard the splash—but when the boats were dropped, nothing was to be seen on the long, dazzling swell of the sea but the back-fin of a large blue shark, veering slowly round between the boats and the ship, as if he had missed his prey—except it were a gull asleep, with its head under its wing—or the fresh branches of a tree, drifting toward the mouth of the Gulf, on the current of the dry monsoon. As she was not to be found in the ship, it was almost certain that she had been leaning over the counter, watching the shark, perhaps, and losing her balance, had perished before she had time to utter a single cry—at least so the captain professed to think. However, it was the next day but one after that, just as the lookouts were going aloft at daybreak, we raised a large shoal of half-grown whales, crossing the ship’s wake, about two miles off, between Gigot and the low island of Ippoo. It was a likely place to meet with whales coming down the Ippoo passage at this season, and as soon as the captain got a look at the spouts from aloft, we wore round at once. The sea was too rough to make them out from deck before they peaked flukes[[5]]; and as the ship was under single-reefed topsails at the time, he must have noticed the fresh squall rising over the land before he sent away the boats. To be sure, two forty-barrel bulls would have filled us up. And after the accident to the lady, every soul in the ship, as you may suppose, was anxious to see the tryworks hove in the sea, and sail made for home. Be that as it may, when the word was given to back the main-yard, instead of the captain sliding down a backstay, in his hurry to be first, Mr. Jinney, the mate, came slowly down the rigging, and kicking off his shoes, without a word, got into his boat. He steered to windward about a mile, allowing for the Tartar’s drift, and then peaked his oars, paddling from time to time, to keep his place, head to sea—the wind fresh’ning all the while, and the clouds rolling together over the land, while the swells got up so fast between the high bluff of Gentoo on the larboard hand, and Divers’ Bank on the other, that we could only see the mate and his harpooner, standing up on the lookout, when the boat rose on the top of a sea. I was looking every minute for the order to hoist the recall signal—as we use no ‘waifs’ in this ship—when the infernal whales rose close to the boat, and almost as soon as we knew they were up, the male was fast. The shoal ‘squandered’[[6]]—some running toward Gentoo, and some coming down toward the ship. I was so eager to head off these last, when the captain sung out to me from the crosstrees to lower away, that I forgot all about the weather, thinking only of the fish, as you may easily understand, if you have any notion of the heat into which things of this sort put a whaleman. However, it was not until I had my whale spouting his last to leeward of the ship, that the squall came down on us sharp as a knife—cutting off the heads of the seas before it, and nearly swamping the boat, as we labored to keep her close under the whale’s lee. After he turned up we kept head to sea, until the ship came driving down in the thick of it, with her three topsail-yards on the caps, and luffing up to the gust, brought us close under her lee, so that we managed to hook on and scramble inboard, just as the rain came down in a solid sheet.’
“ ‘You saw no more of the mate, then?’ I asked, as he stopped short, jerking the stump of his sheroot into the scum which floated round the rudder, and staring at the birds which darted after it, and then at the Arab cruiser, in an earnest, yet vacant way, which showed that his mind, being full of his tale, or something at the bottom of it, took no more note of the craft, at the moment, than if she had been up the Ganges.
“ ‘No, sir,’ he answered slowly, ‘for it was thick and squally for a day or two afterward, and we had nearly lost the ship the same day, on a coral-reef. There was a grab-brig in sight to windward at the time, and we had hopes that she might have picked up the mate’s boat, only that Captain Catherton swore that he saw the whale run it under before the squall shut them in; which, as the third mate, who was aloft at the time, afterwards said, showed that his glass must have had devilish sharp eyes.’
“ ‘Well,’ said I, as he stopped short again, with a world of meaning in his sharp face, ‘I commanded that grab, and I must say your ship was handled well to have steered clear that time. We saw no more of you after the squall struck us, and really it seems to me that Captain Catherton did the best he could under the circumstances; since if he had kept his luff, instead of bearing away before it, it’s more than probable he would have lost two boats’ crews, in place of one.’
“ ‘Very true,’ said he, in a negative sort of a way; ‘but then, I doubt the truth of the captain’s report that the whale took the boat under. The third mate was on the topgallant-crosstrees, with his glass fixed on the boat, when they put their helm up in the ship, and he says that the fish never sounded at all. No man in his senses would have sent away a boat in such weather; and it was the very first time on the v’y’ge that the starboard quarter-boat—the captain’s own—hung at the cranes, and the main-yard aback for a shoal of whales within half a mile of the ship.’