"How did you like whaling?" said I.
"Well, I don't believe there's any man but what feels different alongside of a whale from what he does on the ship's deck. Some of those Nantucket and New Bedford men, who've been brought up to it, as you may say, take it naturally, and think of nothing but the whale. I've heard of one of them boat-steerers who got ketched in a whale's mouth and didn't come out of it quite as whole as he went in. When they asked him what he thought when the whale nabbed him, he said he 'thought she'd turn out about forty barrels.'
"There's a good many things about the whale, gentlemen, that everybody don't know. Why does one whale sink when he's killed, and another don't? Where do the whales go to, now and then?—I sailed with one captain who used to say, that, books or no books, can't live under water or not, he knew that whales do live under water months at a time. I can't say, myself; but this I can say,—they go ashore. You may look hard at that, but I've seen it. We were off the coast of South America, in company with five other ships; and all our captains were ashore one afternoon. We had to pull some two miles or so to go off to them, and, starting off, all hands were for racing. I was pulling stroke in the captain's boat, and the old man gives us the word to pull easy, and let 'em head on us. It was hard work to hold in, with every one of the boats giving way, strong, the captains singing out bets, and cheering their men,—singing out, 'Break your backs and bend your oars!' 'There she blows!' and all that. But the old man kept muttering to us to take it easy and let them head on us. We were soon the last boat, and then, as if he'd given up the race, he gave the word to 'easy.'
"'Good-night, Capt. T——! we'll send your ship in to tow you off,' was the last words they said to us.
"'There'll be something else to tow off,' says he. 'It's the race, who shall see Palmer's Island first, that I'm bound to win.'
"He gave the boat a sheer in for the beach, to a little bight that made up in the land,—across the mouth of which we had to pull, in going off.
"'D'ye see that rock on the beach, boys,' says he, 'in range of that lone tree, on the point? Did any of you ever see that rock before? I wish this bloody coast had a few more such rocks! That's a cow whale, and this bight is her nursery, and she is up on the beach for her calf's convenience. Now, then,'—as we opened the bight and got a fair sight of it,—'give way, strong as you please,—and we'll head her off, before she knows it.'
"We got her and got the calf, and when, next morning, the other ships saw us cutting in, they didn't say much about that race; and 'Old T.'s Nursery' was a byword on the coast as long as we staid there.
"There goes eight bells, and I rather think Mr. Brown will want me on deck." We followed, for there was the prospect of seeing topsails reefed,—the most glorious event of a landsman's sea-experiences. We had begun the day with a dead calm, but toward night the wind had come out of the eastward. Each plunge the ship gave was sharper, each shock heavier. The topmasts were working, the lee-shrouds and backstays straining out into endless curves. A deeper plunge than usual, a pause for a second, as if everything in the world suddenly stood still, and a great white giant seems to spring upon our weather-bow and to leap on board. We hear the crash and feel the shock, and presently the water comes pouring aft,—and Captain Cope calls out to reef topsails,—double-reef fore and mizzen,—one reef in the main. The mates are in the weather-rigging before the word is out of the captain's lips, to take the earings of their respective topsails; and then follows the rush of men up the shrouds and out along the yards. The sails are slatting and flapping, and one can hardly see the row of broad backs against the dusky sky as they bend over the canvas. There are hoarse murmurs, and calls to "light up the sail to windward"; and presently from the fore-topsail-yard comes the cry, ringing and clear,—"Haul away to leeward!"—repeated next moment from the main and echoed from the mizzen. Sheltered by the weather-bulwarks, and with one arm round a mizzen-backstay, there is a capital place to watch all this and feel the glorious thrill of the sea,—to look down the sloping deck into the black billows, with here and there a white patch of foam, and while the organ-harp overhead is sounding its magnificent symphony. It is but wood and iron and hemp and canvas that is doing all this, with some thirty poor, broken-down, dissipated wretches, who, being fit for nothing else, of course are fit for the fo'castle of a Liverpool Liner. Yet it is, for all that, something which haunts the memory long,—which comes back years after in inland vales and quiet farm-houses like brown-moss agates set in emerald meadows, in book-lined studios, and in close city streets. For it is part of the might and mystery of the sea, the secret influence that sets the blood on fire and the heart throbbing,—of any in whose veins runs some of the true salt-water sympathy. Men are born landsmen, and are born on land, but belong to the Ocean's family. Sooner or later, whatever their calling, they recognize the tie. They may struggle against it, and scotch it, but cannot kill it. They may not be seamen,—they may wear black coats and respectable white ties, and have large balances in the bank, but they are the Sea's men,—brothers by blood-relationship, if not by trade, of Ulysses and Vasco, of Columbus and Cabot, of Frobisher and Drake.
Other stories of the sea are floating through my memory as I write,—tales told with elbows leaning on cabin-tables, while the swinging-lamp oscillated drearily overhead, and sent uncertain shadows into the state-room doors. There is the story which Vivian Grey told us of the beautiful clipper "Nighthawk,"—her who sailed with the "Bonita" and "Driving-Scud" and "Mazeppa," in the great Sea-Derby, whose course lay round the world. How, one Christmas-day, off the pitch of Cape Horn, he, standing on her deck, saw her dive bodily into a sea, and all of her to the mainmast was lost in ocean,—her stately spars seemingly rising out of blue water unsupported by any ship beneath;—it seemed an age to him, he said, before there was any forecastle to be seen rising from the brine. Also, how, caught off that same wild cape, they had to make sail in a reef-topsail-breeze to claw off its terrible rocks, seen but too plainly under their Ice. How, as he said, "about four in the afternoon it seemed to blow worse than ever, and you could see the staunch boat was pressed down under her canvas, and every spar was groaning and quivering, while the ship went bodily to leeward." And next, "how she seemed to come to herself, as it were, with a long staggering roll, and to spring to windward as if relieved of a dead weight; for the gale had broken, and the foam-belt along the cliffs grew dimmer and dimmer, and the land fainter and fainter. And then," he said, "to hear the fo'castle-talk, you would have said that never was such a ship, such spars, such a captain, such seamanship, and such luck, since Father Jason cleared the 'Argo' from the Piræus, for Colchis and a market."