“The porpoises have got at it,” I suggested.
“Not much they ain’t,” returned Captain Tugg. “There ain’t no porpoises around today. Whatever the critter is that killed the whale, it’s at dinner now.”
And it was true. The mysterious denizen of the deep that had beaten the whale to death, ate out the huge mammal’s tongue and had sunk again into the sea before we rowed near enough to distinguish its shape or size. It had disappeared as mysteriously as it had risen and seemingly all it had killed the mammal for was to eat its tongue.
Captain Tugg’s eye glistened when he saw the proportions of that whale closer to. He stood up, looked long towards the inlet where there seemed to be some movement among the craft anchored there, and then ordered us to row in close to the whale’s tail.
He passed a hawser around the narrow part of the whale just forward of the tail and then ordered the men to pull for the schooner. It was a tug, now I tell you! but we got the whale to the Sea Spell after a while. I expected to see the spick and span schooner all messed up with try-out works, and grease, and smoke. It disgusted me that the Yankee skipper should be so sharp after the Almighty Dollar. But I didn’t yet know Captain Adoniram Tugg.
I saw that a number of craft had started out of the inlet—a much puffing steam tug ahead, drawing several smaller boats behind it. There was no wind at all, so the fleet approached slowly, and we had the whale tackled to the Sea Spell, fore and aft, before the tug was very near.
We made no immediate attempt to butcher the whale and I took pains to get some of its dimensions. It was eighty-two feet over all in length and nearly sixty feet around the biggest part of the body. The lower jaw was nineteen and one-half feet long and the tail, when it was expanded, measured twenty-three feet. I suppose, through the thickest part of the body it must have been as many feet as the expanded tail was wide; at least, so it appeared. These measurements will give the reader some idea of what these huge mammals look like. And Captain Tugg had not been far out of the way when he declared the whale to be worth two thousand dollars.
“What you got to run oil into, sir?” I asked, curiously.
“Wait a bit; wait a bit,” returned the Yankee, puffing on his cheroot. “Let’s see what these Yaller-skins have to offer. If we hadn’t tailed onto the whale as we did they’d had their hooks in it by this time.”
A few words in Spanish to Pedro had stirred up the mate and crew of the Sea Spell. They seemed wonderfully busy getting a lot of gear and litter upon deck. The uninitiated might have thought that we were getting ready to cut up the whale and boil down the blubber in the most approved style.