Small cutters are continually arriving and departing from and for Freemantle, Vasse, King George’s Sound, and Adelaide. These cutters are sloop-rigged, and vary in size from ten to twenty-five tons. They are built of mahogany wood in the colony, and are represented as safe and convenient crafts; but only the largest of them venture to cross the Bight to Adelaide, and that, too at the favorable season of the year. Their freight consists of produce and goods for the various storekeepers in the settlements.
The people of these colonies generally profess the faith of the Church of England; and in Vasse, the Sound, and Bunbury, Episcopalian chapels are erected; but in none of these places do the inhabitants display a church-going spirit. During the hours of divine service the publicans close their dens, but always manage to supply their customers with the ardent on the sly. They consider the closing of their houses very unjust; and one of them, in inveighing against the tyranny of the laws, gave this as an instance: He mentioned that the government had prohibited card-playing, or any other game of chance or pleasure—even going so far as to forbid bowling-saloons; and that they were led to pass the act by a quarrel arising from a game of cards played for pastime at a public house in Vasse, in which one of the players was killed. Speaking of bowling-saloons, or skittles, as they are called here, reminds me that we heard, previous to our visit to Vasse, that there was a fine bowling-alley there. Congratulating ourselves on this fact, we counted on a game at tenpins as not the least of our anticipated pleasures; but, lo, and behold! when we visited it, we found a floor of mahogany boards, some two feet wide and twelve long. The pins were of the most outlandish shape, and could scarcely be made to retain an upright position, even when held. The balls were nearer oval than round, and as rough on their surface as a cocoa-nut with the hull on. There were only two of these; and when you had discharged them, you were constrained to walk to the farther end of the alley, and carry them back for another trial. After vainly endeavoring for a few minutes to make the balls roll in a straight line, we gave the attempt up as hopeless, and left the skittle-ground, thoroughly convinced of its demerits.
The first time we visited Bunbury there were no wells whence ships could procure water; so we held Geographe Bay in abeyance, knowing that we would have a hundred barrels to drag through its sandy road. After a week’s stay we hove short, set our ensign, and were boarded by the police, who here act as custom-house officials. They searched the ship fore and aft, above and below, as they thought—although we might have had a score of the prisoners stowed away, if we had been so disposed: as it was, we had one forward, stowed in the forepeak, of whom they saw no trace. We carried him to Vasse, and set him ashore. Their mode of search was to get into the hatchway, and insert the native spears in the interstices between the casks. They reviewed the ship’s company, in order to satisfy themselves no interlopers were there, and then delivered up the ship’s papers and departed. We then set sail, and, after twelve hours’ beating against a light headwind, we let go our anchor off the town of Vasse, where we procured water. Here we had several quarters of fresh beef—in Bunbury we had one whole sheep.
On the 20th, the ship Twilight came in and informed us that the barque Mars, with numerous letters for us, was on the eve of making this port. The next morning she made her appearance, and her stock of letters had not been over-stated, the majority of our crew, myself amongst the number, receiving letters that had been written only six months previous; and, as all of us had good news, and plenty of newspapers, we were more pleasantly employed than we should have been had we just captured a large whale.
On the same day our second officer, Mr. E——, left us, and went ashore; the reason he assigned being his unwillingness to encounter the cold weather on the coast of New Zealand, whither we were bound. He was a man of a most amiable disposition, had a superior intellect, and was thoroughly acquainted with his profession—both as sailor and whaleman. He had gained the respect and confidence of every man aboard, and never had had occasion all the time we were together to chide any of the crew, and as his chest went over the side into the boat, all felt that we had lost a friend. This was the second withdrawal of members of our original crew from the ship. Mr. E.’s intention was to remain ashore until some whaler should arrive in need of an officer; in which case his well-known ability would easily procure him a berth. When ready to sail, the captain brought an American aboard who had been in these colonies for some years, and was slightly related to the captain’s lady. He was taken into the cabin as fourth mate; the former fourth officer receiving the position of third mate, and the former third the second mate’s berth. All being in readiness, we hove up our ground-tackle, and with a fresh breeze on our quarter we bade adieu to Vasse.
CHAPTER VII.
Early on the morning of January 26th, we spoke and gammoned the barque La Belle Anna, from Melbourne to Mauritius. Through the kindness of her captain, who accommodatingly delayed until we had prepared them, we sent letters home via the Mauritius, which were duly received. On the same day we captured a shark twelve feet long. The capture of this fish is effected more in a spirit of mischief than from any good resulting from it; the sailor deeming him his natural enemy, and delighting in putting him to the severest torture. Their tenacity of life is remarkable. I have seen a red-hot iron run directly through the heart of one of the species, and still he turned and bit at the iron, grasping its seething surface between his huge jaws and craunching it, and, vexed at its non-impressibility, lashing his tail with rage. I have also seen them flayed, and still practising as many contortions as an eel; if you cut their heads half off, they swim away; and if you should open the body and allow the entrails to drop out, the creature seizes them in his jaws and tears them in his agony. The skin is used as sandpaper, it being covered with prickles. The backbone is articulated in very small divisions, which enables it to turn with so much celerity through the water. These joints, which are about an inch in diameter, and half an inch thick, are collected and strung on an iron rod, and, when finished, make an odd, though not ill-looking, cane. Few seamen eat shark; but some months after the capture of the above-mentioned one, I saw a person who considered their flesh a dainty. He was captain of a Colonial whaler, and took every possible means of gratifying this strange appetite. I never saw its flesh cook, but from those that have, I learn that no amount of cooking changes its appearance; as, after a day’s boiling, it appears as raw as ever.
On the 28th we sent up studding-sails and began a passage for New Zealand. The next morning, at daybreak, whilst carrying all sail, we sighted sperm whales. After a short delay, we lowered for them. The second mate fastened to a large one, fired a bomb-lance into him, and had his boat capsized. The crew were picked up and brought to the ship, also the boat, which was found uninjured. The first and third mates continued in pursuit of the whales, and, after a short interval, the latter fastened to the same whale. The fourth mate approached the fish, and in giving him a lance, got his boat on to the whale’s flukes, and stove. The boat was towed to the ship; whilst hoisting her aboard, she broke in two amidships, was condemned as useless, and broken up for firewood. In the evening we had the whale alongside. The following morning we began to cut, being surrounded by thousands of sharks. The boatsteerer, who went down on to the whale to hook on, was seized by a shark, who caught him by the back of the heel. Fortunately, the man who attended the monkey-rope attached to the boatsteerer, saw the movement of the shark and dragged him on deck. The wound inflicted was severe but not dangerous. Sharks around a whale, generally, are contented with what they pick up from his carcass, and to the plenitude of this kind of food for their ravenous appetites, the boatsteerer owes his safety. In this case the sufferer was barefooted, and his flesh being covered with spermaceti, probably the shark thought it a dainty piece of blubber.
The barque Columbus also captured a large whale on this same day. In 1855, this barque visited Vasse and carried away a prisoner, agreeing to place him aboard some merchant ship, on the first opportunity. This was accordingly done, for which the captain received, it was said, a large sum of money—the criminal being well-provided with funds. Whilst we lay in Vasse, it leaked out, somehow or other, that the government intended seizing the vessel on her next entry into a colonial port. When we saw her we gave her the news, and it was timely, too, as they were just going in to discharge men, whom they had engaged in Vasse the preceding year.
The ground that we were now on is off Cape Chatham. There we remained until the middle of February, when, with as much sail set as the old ship would stagger under, and a westerly gale on the quarter, we resumed our passage for New Zealand, which had been interrupted by the appearance of sperm whales. The passage had but little to mark it, except that we went in the course of it through the northern borders of the Antarctic Ocean. On the 22d (Washington’s birthday) we entered the South Pacific, and after a spanking run of fourteen days, we sighted land and a sail at one and the same time. The sail we knew to be a whaler, from her boats and davits, and a successful one, too, by the smoke arising from her try-works—she being evidently engaged in trying-out blubber. On running across her stern and speaking each other, both captains answered to the question of “What ship is that?” “The Pacific.” One, however, belonged to New Bedford, the other to Hobartown. The preceding week she captured two whales. She reported that she had been cruising to the southward on the Sullender ground, in company with the ships James Allen and Alexander, and the barque Wavelett—that all three of these vessels had been extremely successful in capturing whales, but that the Wavelett, when last seen, was on a lee shore, with a large whale in tow, which eventually she cast adrift. Her position was such that the captain and officers of the Pacific unite in thinking it impossible for her to have escaped from the peril, and should she have gone ashore, the rugged and precipitous coast in the vicinity of Mason’s Bay, where she was last seen, augurs the destruction of vessel and crew. We made up our minds from this report that the Wavelett and her crew, who but a short time before had been enjoying themselves with us in King George’s Sound, had gone to Davy Jones’s locker; but five months afterward we were agreeably surprised on picking up a paper published in the Bay of Islands, to find her reported as lying in port there with considerable increase in her stock of oil.