Two boats from the Helen Marr struck whales while the monsters were feeding within an oar's length of each other. One whale started off at right angles to the direction taken by the other. It looked for a time as if the two lines would become entangled and the boats would crash together. But the whale that cut across the other's course swam above the latter's line and dragged its boat so swiftly after it that a collision was averted by a few feet.
One of the whales was bombed and killed after a short flight. The other acted in a way that whales hardly ever act. It ran hard to windward at first, as whales usually do when struck. Then it suddenly turned and ran in an exactly opposite direction. This unexpected change in its course almost upset the boat, which was jerked violently over on its beam-ends and spun round like a top, while the crew held on for dear life and barely escaped being pitched into the sea. Once righted and on its way again, the boat rapidly hauled up on the whale, whose fast-going vitality showed in its diminished speed. After a flight that had covered at least a mile, the whale was finally killed close to the spot at which it had first been struck.
When, the sharp, fast work of the boats ended, five mighty carcasses lay stretched upon the sea. The great whale drive, which had lasted less than an hour, had bagged game worth something like $60,000.
The three ships soon sailed to close quarters and the boats had a comparatively easy time getting the whales alongside. That night the try-works were started and big cressets whose flames were fed by "scrap" flared up on all the ships, lighting them in ghostly-wise from the deck to the topmost sail.
At the cutting in of this whale I had my first experience at the windlass. The heaviest labor falls to the sailors who man the windlass and hoist in the great blanket pieces of blubber and the "old head." Gabriel, the happiest-spirited old soul aboard, bossed the job, as he always did, and cheered the sailors and made the hard work seem like play by his constant chanteys—those catchy, tuneful, working songs of the sea. All the old sailors on the brig knew these songs by heart and often sang them on the topsail halyard or while reefing on the topsail yard. The green hands soon picked up the words and airs of the choruses and joined in. The day laborer on land has no idea how work at sea is lightened by these songs.
Gabriel knew no end of them, and in a round, musical voice led the men at the windlass in such rollicking old-time sea airs as "Whiskey for the Johnnies," "Blow the Man Down," "Blow, Boys, Blow," and "Rolling Rio." He would sing a verse and the sailors would stand with their hands on the windlass bars until he had concluded. Then they would heave away with a will and make the pawls clank and clatter as they roared out the chorus. The old negro's favorite was "Whiskey for the Johnnies." It had a fine rousing chorus and we liked to sing it not only for its stirring melody but because we always harbored a hope—which, I may add, was never realized—that the captain would be touched by the words and send forward a drop of liquor with which to wet our whistles. Gabriel would begin in this way:
"O whiskey is the life of man."
And the sailors as they heaved would chorus:
"O whiskey, O Johnny.
O whiskey is the life of man,
Whiskey for the Johnnies."