A chunk of green sea came over our poop and bridge last night, banged on our iron cabin door which faces astern with a thunderous shock and swept over the bows. Some went over the bridge, and a lot came down to the cabin, enough to be unpleasant. Out came styrman like a rabbit from his bunk, and I’m pretty sure both the writer and captain’s colour was not suggestive of pure joy. In a brace of shakes, after this big wave broke over us last night, Henriksen was at the wheel and the engine going again—the engineer had stopped it for some reason, perhaps to let our decks clear off the sea. Then sacks with waste and oil were rigged out on either bow, and we continued, the seas breaking angrily but out of reach of us. So we drove through the night and are satisfied, and won’t do it again. We did ninety miles in the night with practically only two seas aboard, and we do not believe there’s a boat floating of our size or bigger that would do the same, and we forecast our style of stern and lines under water becoming the fashion.
This morning we have a bit of foresail up again and an experimental jib as storm trysail on our mainmast, and it seems just to be right.[9]
I thought I had missed sport by writing these notes and not turning out early, for when I did put up my head into the wind and spray, the mate was silhouetted on the bow, harpoon in hand, with figures grouped round him, holding lines, in attitudes of intense expectancy, and there were dolphins springing alongside. But it was too rough. Several lunges were made by various members of the crew with our little hand harpoon and its long spruce shaft, but they were misses all. The sun shone about midday, a small incident, but after three days’ storm and heavy seas it was a cheering sight, and the sea became blue, but always too rough to get a harpoon into the dolphins. They appeared again at night. The sea was full of phosphorus, so we could see their brilliant tracks shooting round backwards and forwards like the trail of rockets. Though I have been amongst hundreds of whales at different times and seasons I have never had the luck to see one going through a phosphorescent sea; but Henriksen tells me a year or two ago, off Korea, he tried to harpoon one in the dark, aiming at the glare as it passed alongside. He could scarcely see the gun and fired a bit too far back, I think at the light, instead of ahead of it, and missed and saw the yellow blaze of light under water as the shell on the point of the harpoon exploded. “Ask me if that whale went fast,” he said.
It is Sunday, the 8th October, an idyllic Sunday; there’s a grand, blue, rippling swell, and enough air to keep our sails spread, so we roll gently along, a block creaking occasionally and our little engine throbbing beautifully. But there is a slight feeling of annoyance aft, and it’s easily understood. Our skipper has his idea of what Sunday at sea should be when there’s no whaling or hard sailing to attend to, and I agree with him. He thinks all clothes-washing and drying blankets and mattresses should be done on Saturday, Sunday should show clear decks, shaved chins and, if possible, a change of clothes and mind. But most of our crew apparently have been brought up to the common idea of Sunday as washing-day and have hung up shirts and clothes of all kinds everywhere. Henriksen endures the un-Sundaylike display but vows “never again.” Next Sunday we will be neat and clear, or all hands will be working double tide at flensing or hunting whales—we shall see!
Meantime we have had days of quiet ship work, the sea getting more blue each day, and winter clothes shedding. On this account we held a shoppie on Friday—got out the captain’s slop chest from the hold. This is an old sailing-ship custom. Six of us carried it aft to quarter-deck, unlocked it and took all the contents into the little cabin, and wasn’t it a well-stocked shop—jerseys, trousers, boots in cardboard boxes, caps, shirts, woollen gloves for the cold northern seas, and white and blue dungaree suits for tropics, and scented soap! It was new for me to see scented soap on such a business. Henriksen and the first mate have a busy afternoon with their coats off and pipes going, looking up prices and calculating the ten per cent. profit—a small profit to cover risks—and good articles. I’ve seen fifty per cent. made off very inferior goods. And the crew come down one by one and buy what they need or can afford, and “ask me” if the atmosphere doesn’t get thick towards lamplight time.
There was not much sale in the way of winter kit. The heaps of mits and thick woollen socks will not be appreciated till St Ebba gets far south towards the ice edge.
With our present crew of Norsemen it is not so easy to get interested in them, individually, as with sailors of our own race; still the few words we have of each other’s language, eked out with signs and drawings, go far—drawings especially; indeed, from the captain downwards, painting excites far more intelligent interest among our crowd than they would with my own countrymen. Our old Dundonian whalers were neither very musical nor artistic. Here the skipper plays Grieg, and has a lively interest in every æsthetic aspect and every change of form and colour in waves and sky, and has actually taken up water-colours and playing on my bagpipe practice chanter, but I fear that for neither of these will he be able to spare time, for a skipper is, or should be, practically on duty all the time. But his first attempt at water-colours—a blue sea and white breakers under a blue sky—was not half bad. The blue sea was there all right, but the rhythm of the waves and the half tints, who can do them justice?—Wyllie, to a certain extent, but I cannot remember anyone else, unless Colin Hunter, and he is dead.
It is a real day of rest, contemplation and dreaming. Our greatest effort has been to rig a line for dolphins. Both the trolling tackles we had out were carried away last night, so I unearthed a tunny hook I had fastened to a wire rope with a strip of aluminium to act as spoon bait. Now that is trolling astern for the benefit of any wandering albicore, tunny, bonita dolphin or such-like. I expect the crack of the breaking fir stem boom, from which the line trails, will wake us from our dreams.
You may dream on board a whaler! dream at the wheel on such a day as this, or in the crow’s nest, or sitting on one of the boats, for you are so cut off from the world of people who stop dreams—nurses, mothers, policemen and preachers. Alas, when you think of it, what genius has perhaps been nipped in the bud by the reprehensible habit of such well-meaning people. Where would art, science and literature be to-day, we reflect, had dreaming not been discouraged by those who took charge of our tender days. Mercifully, with the advance of years, some of us learn to dodge these interruptions by going to sea, perhaps—where one may dream or follow out a train of thought, as it were, on the sly. For dreaming is following out a train of thought. Newton dreamed when he saw the apple fall. Mercifully he had got beyond the nursery governess stage, or his line of thought would have been nipped with: “Johnny, do wake up and come along now, don’t dawdle there, what are you dreaming about?” Watt managed, on one occasion, to dream on the sly and watched a boiling kettle, and was it not either an Angle or a Saxon chief who dreamed and let cakes burn and so united the tribes of Southern Britain? Moral, when a small boy dreams over dessert you may morally rap him over the knuckles and he will eat his dessert, but you may have spoiled the greatest mathematical genius of our age.