The origin of the chapter heading is perhaps obscure. It was inspired by the fact that we reached the outer ocean, returned to Colla Firth and shelter in the evening, and dropped anchor in the twilight opposite the Norwegian wooden-painted buildings of the Alexandra Whale Company, which all the workers have left for the winter, the Norsemen to Norway, and the Shetlanders to their crofts, like bees to enjoy their summer earnings through the winter.
The morning was perfect so we weighed anchor about five A.M. As we passed Haldane’s house at Lochend, the black blinds were still down and the sun shining on its white wall, so we did not as much as blow our horn to disturb its inmates but hied away for the open sea again, past these Ramna Stacks and held a course N.W. For about ten miles we kept this course till we got to the forty and sixty fathom soundings that mark the change to deep water, then turned S.W., gradually leaving Shetland below the horizon with Foula, the outlying craggy island showing grey against a pale rib of salmon-coloured sky beneath the grey pigeon-coloured clouds. And for once in a way we have what may be called a smooth sea, at least there’s no white water, and alas and alas, no whales nor any sign of life in the ocean. Evidently the season is over, the Gulf Stream has been switched off.
There is still so much to do on board that there is barely time for disappointment. The whales must be somewhere, so why not farther down our Scottish coast; so we keep going south, one man only watching, all the rest of us busy with a variety of work—the artist, the first mate and a hand laying down a flooring on our main-deck or waist, made of planks we brought from the wood behind Henriksen’s house on Nottero. This is to save our permanent deck, for when the whales do come they will have their dark, silky skin and firm, white fat hauled up on to this from their bodies in the sea, and there will be so much cutting and chopping and hauling wire ropes and iron flinching blocks across this waist or main-deck that our permanent deck would suffer in appearance were it not protected. And the smith is tackling a piece of ironwork, with the bos’n as assistant, making clamps to hold chock blocks for the new scuttle hatch or companion we have made through the big hatch over the main hold. This being just small enough to admit a man, we can leave it open in bad weather for access to the hold.
The captain attends to a thousand and one things without pretending to do so, leaving as much as possible to the mate and crew, and has a two hours’ sleep, preparatory to a night on the bridge, and works out the course on his chart. We are aiming—failing whales—at Tobermory, and at odd intervals we talk whales and prospects, about this kind of whale and the other, and the sperm in particular, that we are now setting our hopes on meeting; as the finner has not put in an appearance, the valuable sperm compared to the less valuable but infinitely stronger fighting finners. Also Henriksen looks on a little as I paint, for he is just as interested in my painting as I am interested in his pricking out our course on the face of one of those most suggestive pictures, the Admiralty charts. There is nothing more fascinating, even thrilling, to my mind than picking up this light or the other as we do to-night, and verifying it on the chart in the cabin.
Noaphead Light on the Orkneys is the first we will pick up, we should see that soon after (or before) picking up the “three flashes in quick succession” from that lonely skerry, Sule Skerry, between Orkney and Cape Wrath. Its guiding circle of radiance intersects the circle of the rays from Cape Wrath. Cape Wrath is white and red alternately. Then we will hie for the Butt of Lewis, weather permitting. St Ebba give us better weather than we met there in the Balæna, a whaling barque of the old style out from Dundee uncountable years ago—we were twenty days hove to in a wicked gale with broken bulwarks, spars, and tattered sails—twenty days between Cape Wrath and the south-west of Ireland—bad spaewives did it! Now, holy St Ebba, hear our prayer. Dear saint, give us gentle winds and fair, and for what we are about to receive in the way of whales or fine weather we will be most truly thankful.
This is the first mate’s birthday—he is certificated as master and has attained the ripe age of twenty-two, quite an advanced age for many a Norwegian master, and we celebrate his birthday and incidentally our first really fine day since we left Norway. Our skipper believes in making small celebrations on shipboard. He likes to get good work from the men and be friends at the same time, a perfectly possible attainment. All hands get a small bottle of light beer, and the steward (cook, he would be called with us) makes pastry for all hands. We begin our festive meal with cormorant fricassee, you could not escape the smell anywhere aft this afternoon. I can’t quite rise to cormorant; penguins and several other sea-birds I like; but there’s no accounting for taste, and our mechanicien or engineer, a Swede, simply dotes on cormorants, and regrets leaving the Shetlands and the endless supply of these hard-featured birds. Then we have the pastry, and such pastry I have never seen equalled; certainly our cook is more than steward, he is a chef! And the bottle of brandy is brought forth (out of bond, one shilling a bottle and not bad at that). Each of us has a little, and it is sent to the fo’c’sle and comes back still half full—one bottle for fifteen men and the bottle not empty! and a box of cigars goes from mess-room to fo’c’sle likewise, and comes back half full, so our crew cannot be said to be extravagant; then, to complete the celebration, Nansen, the steward, sits on the main-hatch and plays the ship’s melodeon, and Rolf, the youngest on board, dances a pas seul on our new floor—a dance between a mazurka and hornpipe, with two or three clean somersaults thrown in. He is a pretty dancer, and of good family, I am told, too lively for home, just the sort you need on board ship. He and the steward of the pale face and yellow hair danced together. I could just distinguish them in the dark from the bridge against the light planks of our newly laid working deck. For a moment, whilst the skipper played, my heart stood still! for the steward nearly went over our low bulwarks at a roll from the swell—his exquisite pastry flashed across my mind.
We saw Sule skerry twinkling in the night a few miles to starboard. I would like to make a visit there, it would be such a soothing place to live on, the solitude must be so emphatic, for it is equidistant from Orkney and Cape Wrath, and out of sight of either. In the morning the light on Cape Wrath went out and we saw the beetling cliffs backed with high, bare ridges of the Sutherland mountains against a yellow sunrise. On a soft, rolling, rippling sea and far off, a mere speck beneath the cliffs, we made out a fellow-whaler (only a steamer), with its long trail of smoke beneath the cliff steaming east, and we thought she was the Hebrides, one of the steamers of a small company, the Blacksod Bay Company in Ireland, which I wish well. Evidently it was on its road to Norway, so we gathered that whales must be scarce and the weather probably bad on the Irish coast.
Our saint has answered our prayer, and instead of the wild weather we associate with these parts we go comfortably along at eight knots, with the engine singing a soft song to its gentle beat. What a difference between the lot of the motor engineer at sea and the steamer’s engineer, the motor man in a pleasantly warm, spacious room, the other in cramped space with considerable heat, and the clanging of stokers’ shovels.
Past the E. of Lewis we motor steadily. One killer or grampus we saw, and about a dozen dolphins in the three days’ run south, and very few birds. So we felt confirmed in our belief that we should proceed to Southern Seas now, instead of waiting for whales in northern latitudes. Evidently the season here is over.
Now we have Neist Light and its double flash, to port, and we pass Dunvegan and wish we could see the familiar mountains of Skye. But the light is all we have, and welcome it is; past it a little and we will have the light on Hyskeir Rock to guide us on our way till we pick up Colonsay and our old friend Ardnamurchan, and the light on its point where the white-tailed eagles used to breed.