A fisherman is not to be pitied coming home with seventy tons to port and sixty to starboard, enjoying the sense of comfort and well-being that comes after the first hardening days at sea, enjoying the pure air and the scent of roasting coffee. We do ourselves well on our Norwegian boats this year; at least the coffee is good. As we imbibe it and think our sport is over, we come into warmer weather, a froth of soft white and grey clouds reflected in the swell, two whalers on the horizon and finners in sight. So it’s all alive-o! Off with the guns’ coverings—we may have a third whale to show the girls on shore—(if there were any!). And we chased these too in the silky silence of that space of sea and air and reflections of fairy lands of softest, most pearly cumulus clouds with only a spot of frosted blue overhead to give force to the faintest yellow, the only sound, the soft thrum of our subdued screw beat and the occasional surge as we crushed down on the glassy swell, and every now and then the great deep, deep sigh of the seventy-ton finners rising in front, alas always just out of reach. One of the whales bore a scar where we think a harpoon had glanced off. The Fritjiof, a neighbour whaler, also occupied this ocean chamber a few miles off and quietly went about in tow of a whale; we saw her fire one shot and noted the colour of the smoke, blue against her hull fading to rusty brown across the sky. She had four lines into the beast when we called on her later, and chatted across the swell to the harpooneer.
Now we have again picked up our prey of dead whales and are toddling home five to six miles an hour at full steam, and ought to be in by dinner-time to-morrow, Wednesday—that is, twelve o’clock.
Wednesday morning, it is, it must be! But it seems months since Wednesday last week. Yesterday seemed a week, with its endless gallery of magnificent sky and sea pictures. Now there is time for a shave and a wash in the sun on the top of the engine-house. What intense luxury! What joy to sit and shave and be unconscious of the roll, how superior we feel compared to the townsmen who left Leith a week ago. There’s the rush and sound of many waters over our whales on either side, the largest a little less than our own length. All hands have an easy time. It takes two watches (eight hours each) down the Shetland shore to our station, and no whales about. Of course the land is clouded, and we regret that sunny chamber to the N. and E. of Shetland. I speak to Jensen as we pass the western cliffs and he verifies my experience; to the N.W. you come against dark hangings of rain, N.E. you are in sun, back to land and you are in clouds again. It is no wonder that sunny, crystalline stretch of sea a hundred miles north of Flugga Light calls to one in town to go a-whaling.
CHAPTER XII
Having put down these recent experiences of modern whaling, which, though not exciting, may at least be instructive, let us return to follow the fortunes of our patient whalers on the St Ebba.
It is September now, and a Wednesday, and early and clear and cold, with no gale, with just a ripple down Lerwick Bay; one or two people are lighting their peat fires and the scent comes off to us on the pure, almost wintry air, and we hoist the Union Jack astern though no one may see it, and let steam into the steam donkey-engine, and up comes the port anchor, then the starboard and there is a pause and a bell rings for stand-by, then half-speed and clash goes the air pressure; then full speed, and the motor settles down to its steady musical beat and hum. We are becoming more easy in our minds now about our air compressor starting the engine, but have not quite forgotten that failure down south-west of Norway, in the heavy weather, and the subsequent twenty-four hours of hand-pumping for air pressure to start the engine.
Now we swing round and head south and east out of Lerwick Bay, past the Bressay Light on our left, and then turn northwards towards Whalsey and the Outer Skerries, making for Yell Sound and the west of Shetland for whales, finners, rorquals or big cetaceans of any kind. I found on my visit to the west coast of Shetland on Sunday, to our whaling station there, that our steam-whalers had left for Norway a week previously. Owing to the rough weather they said the season was over; but they left word that there were still whales about the coast as close as five miles. Now we have lovely weather to-day, though so cold it feels as if we were at the start of the spring fishing rather than arriving at the end of the season. It will be rather rich if we capture a few whales when the others have fled. At any rate we have the joyous sense of freedom from competitors that we trout and salmon fishers feel when we find our favourite pool is unoccupied by another rod.
But, dear brother anglers, could I but tell you of the joy of preparation for whaling! You know how your fingers almost tremble as you undo your casts for the first day’s fishing of the year, and what pleasure there is in all the preparations.
Now we are enjoying a similar pleasure, only our preparations are on a larger scale, fifteen there are of us, all doing something to help. The captain and the writer sit on the bridge and con the chart with thumb and finger, picking up the points—rocks, skerries, beacons. “Steady she is now, keep her heading for Muckle Skerry,” with Isbister, Moa, Nista and Nacka skerries on our left. Another mile or two in this direction and we will turn westwards right through Yell Sound that divides the main island from the island of Yell.