Mouth of a Finner Whale
Showing the hairy surface of the whalebone plates on the palate.
We are heading west again, east to west and back again and north and south, we go in any direction we fancy, but never a whale, so the Sabbath is devoted to the melodeon and painting. We have a book to read but the cloud pictures and their reflections always take our eyes from the print.
So we live on a whaler, in old clothes, seldom changed. I think we rather affect worn, patched clothes. Our cook or steward, a man of means, I have no doubt, in his own country, has a faded blue jersey, the darning of which must have pleasingly occupied many of the few hours of leisure he has on board, and the men, too, have most artistic patches on their clothes. They differ from their superior the skipper in that their coats are torn and darned, and his is torn and not darned. The writer’s is neither, but will be shortly, and the crease in the trousers is a memory; it goes soon on a whaler, where you waste no time changing clothes—certainly not oftener than once a week. But, though we are roughly clad, we have Grieg’s music, rye bread, and whale meat, luxuries we often have to do without on shore; the black-bread Socialists will have none of it, and the meat for which the Japs, even for the fat, pay twenty-five cents a pound.
The melodeon player’s biography would make good MS. He is young and big, weaned from shore to sea by his skipper father at thirteen; master’s certificate at seventeen; then mate on a sailing ship to the Colonies; master and gunner on a Japanese whaler; twenty pounds a month; seven pounds for each whale and all found; large pay in Norway; purchaser of his own island; farm, wife, three children; a sixteen-hand fast trotter, sleighs, guns, rifles; six months on shore; six at sea; youth and exuberant spirits and as keen about securing a guillemot for the pot as for a four-hundred-pound sterling Nord Capper.... The day passes and it seems as hopeless as ever, but I find Henriksen knows some useful fo’c’sle language for the relief of feelings; it gives a little lurid colour to the otherwise monotonous soft pigeon-grey landscape.
For hours at a time the fascination of watching the horizon for a blow is enough to keep one’s mind fully occupied, but at length and at last the writer begins to count painting and reading as of equal interest—a deplorable state of affairs. It is almost hopeless, from a whaling point of view, so we are going to give up this ocean north-east of Shetland, and go south-westwards some seventy-five miles till we see the Flugga Lighthouse, thence we will make a new departure and go and have a cast in the North-West Atlantic.
Ah! but I have hopes—there were big finners in families out there last year, at about this time they came up from the south, possibly from even south of the Line. I remember the oldest members were very exclusive, but some of the younger people made our acquaintance. There was one, an island!—may I have a shot at it is my prayer, then would there be some real interest in life for us all.
So we practically put in the Sunday without work, only watch and hope, and make a passage; but the two engineers and two boy stokers work. One of the stokers looked as if he did so hate work this morning—came on deck with his black face disfigured with an expression that meant: “I could kill anyone if I was strong enough!” He is such a sleeper that Larsen, his master, to waken him, took down the foghorn in the small hours and blared it into his ears. Henriksen in the chart-house where he sleeps, jumped at the sound, and I too, sleeping aft over the rudder, dreamt I heard the sweet note.
It is a curious little family party we are; bit by bit, I begin to know about the individual, gentle, blue-eyed Vikings, about their farms, and boats, at home; for farms and even sheep have a certain interest at sea, when you are not watching for whales.
One of them, a long, young man, with pale eyes and three or four fair hairs on his chin, has such a kind expression, and a stutter! It is the funniest thing in the world, in the beginning or the middle of a chase, if he is at the wheel, to listen to him, as he tackles the speaking tube. He spits hurriedly, then in a sing-song note, he says: “F-f-ulls-s-speed,” twists the wheel and spits again, saying some Norse expression for “Tut-tut” or “Oh, bother,” and then the same performance at “S-s-saghte” (i.e. Slowly). Finally he gives up stuttering words down the tube and resorts to the engine-room bell for signalling.