Not many miles out at sea a Killer (or Orca gladiator) appeared coming from starboard. Our guns were all covered with canvas so we did not clear for action, and the Killer is not of much value. He came towards us and passed forty yards astern, a fact which greatly comforted us, for “those who know” on shore informed us a motor would drive away whales, but how they knew it is hard to say. Then it was said so often, and with such a sense of conviction, that without acknowledging it, we had a slight sense of chill. This Cetacean, a whale of, say, thirty feet, took not the least notice of our crew, and as our fortunes depend on being able to approach the leviathans of the ocean, without frightening them, the incident, though apparently small, gave us considerable encouragement.
Our first day at sea has passed very busily and we go below for a spell to our blankets, early, and tired, but with a joy beyond words at turning in again to a cosy bunk with everything at hand—pipe, books, paints, even music (practice pipe chanter), all within arm’s-reach, an open port and chilly, clean air, and the faintest suggestion of movement; such luxuries you may not have on shore.
The sea did not hide its teeth for long. After sundown skirts of rain appeared from threatening clouds on the distant Norse coast. Gradually they spread across our track, bands of little ripples, like mackerel playing, appeared on the smooth swell, and these spread and joined till all the sea was dark with a breeze, which in a few hours grew to a strong wind against us.
As we passed Ryvingen Light on the south of Norway the night grew dismal and rough; we watched its revolving four-flash light, which seemed to be answered by the three flashes we saw lit up the sky from the light on Hentsholme in Denmark, over forty miles to our south, and the gloomy sky over the Skagerak was lit with occasional angry flashes of lightning.
Unpromising weather for our first night at sea!
By two in the night we were digging into the same hole, making little or no way, with more than half-a-gale from sou’-west.
In the morning we were a very sad lot of whaler sailors. Fore and aft all were sick, or at least very sorry for themselves. All but Henriksen and the mate and the writer and one man were really ill, and we, I believe, only pretended to be well—such is the effect of the motion of a small whaler vessel on even old sailors on their first experience of them. I have known Norsemen who have been at sea all their lives on large craft refuse to go on a modern whaler at any pay.
We aim at getting up the Norse coast as far as Bergen, then going west towards north of Shetlands and, given fine weather, we ought to pick up a whale or two before putting in to Lerwick, where we must re-register our vessel.
But the wind increases to a full gale. All the sea is white and the sky hard, and rain and sun alternate and our nine-and-a-half-knot speed is reduced to about four.