Chapter XVI
In Which There Is Some Information and Much Excitement
The young second officer’s command needed no repetition. There was no temptation for us to linger under the monster. With a crash that seemed to make sea and air tremble, the great body struck the surface of the water.
The whaleboat dashed back just in time, and then rocked upon the waves as the dying whale rolled to and fro in his “flurry.” Then, with a great puff, the creature rolled partially on his side, and the ocean thereabout became tinged with the blood thrown out of its blow-hole.
“Killed with one lance! killed with one lance!” yelled Second Mate Gibson.
But then he gripped his dignity again and sat down, giving commands in his ordinary tone. Old Tom stood up to glance about the sea-scape: “And now where’s that thundering old hooker?” he demanded. “We’ll have a fine time pulling this baby to her.”
But that is what we had to do. We had had our “fun;” now we settled down to doggedly pulling the heavy oars, being divided into two watches, and saw the light of the Scarboro’s trying-out works at midnight! The Captain and Mr. Rudd had both got small whales and one had been laid aboard each side of the bark. The crew were working like gnomes in a pantomime when we rowed sadly to the bark with our huge tow. How we worked! I never had been so tired in my life, and at the end of the second day when the oil from the three whales had been run into the tanks and the decks cleared up again, I could have fallen into my hammock and slept the clock around. But one never catches up one’s sleep on a successful whaler, and the Scarboro certainly was proving good her name as a “lucky” craft.
Between Tom Anderly and Ben Gibson I learned a lot about whaling statistics—famous voyages, wonderful accidents to whaling crews “lucky strikes,” and the like. And these facts, both curious and exciting, I stowed away in my mind for future reference. Despite the fact that steam vessels and the gun and explosive bullet have almost supplanted the old-fashioned manner of killing whales, the luck and pluck of half a century, or more, ago, counted for enough to offset these new methods.
The most extraordinary good-luck voyage ever made by an American whaler was that of the bark Envoy, belonging to the Brownells of New Bedford. She was built in 1826 and in the year 1847 she returned to her then home port in such a condition that the underwriters refused to insure her for another voyage. But Captain William C. Brownell and Captain W. T. Walker agreed to take a chance in the old hulk and she put to sea from New Bedford under Captain Walker on July 12, 1848. As fitted for sea the Envoy, for repairs, supplies and all, stood the two owners in the sum of $8,000, whereas a vessel that could be insured might have cost from $40,000 to $60,000.
She got around the Horn without falling apart and took on a cargo of oil at Wytootackie which her captain had previously purchased from a wrecked whaler and stored there. This oil she hobbled into Manila with and shipped it to London at a profit of $9,000. From Manila the Envoy went cruising in the North Pacific and in fifty-five days she took 2,800 barrels of whale-oil and 40,000 pounds of baleen. With this she returned to Manila and shipped the bone and 1,800 barrels of oil to London, the shipment yielding $37,500 net.