Jim kept me up. “We don’t know in what direction the boat went,” he observed. “She may have steered to the northward, and we are as likely to fall in with him the way we’re going as anywhere else.”
I often consulted the chart. To the northward of Strong’s Island I saw the Caroline group, consisting of a vast number of coral islands, and north-west of them, again, the Ladrone Islands, the principal of which, Guam, is inhabited by Spaniards. Knowing this, Captain Barber may have attempted to reach it, and one day, to my satisfaction, I heard from the doctor that Captain Hawkins intended to call there before returning home.
We were now leaving those islands I have mentioned to the southward. We were very successful on the Japan ground, and nearly completed our cargo, at least the lower hold was full.
At length, one calm day, a large whale was seen spouting at some distance from the ship. Four boats were lowered. The captain, the two mates, and Brown went in them, Miles Soper going as the chief mate’s boat-steerer. His boat was the first up, and in a short time Soper put two irons into the whale, which almost instantly turned over on its back, threw its lower jaw open, and nipped her clean in two.
Wonderful to relate, the men all got clear, and Mr Griffiths, standing up on half of the boat, plunged his lance right down the whale’s throat, and then jumped off and swam with the other men to the next boat coming up. The captain’s boat now fastened to the whale, which, turning as before on its back, treated her in the way it had the first. When we who were on board saw this, we began to lower the spare boats as fast as we could. While we were thus employed, the doctor, who was looking on, exclaimed—
“There’s a third boat caught!”
And we saw that the second mate’s boat, which had got up, had been nipped by the whale. Brown’s boat, the fourth, now pulled gallantly up, watching every movement of the monster, if necessary to get out of its way; but the wound it had received had already weakened it, and though it made at his boat he escaped, and succeeded in plunging several harpoons and lances into its body.
Meanwhile the crews of the other boats which had been destroyed had been hanging on to them, and though the sea was swarming with sharks it was a remarkable fact that not one of the men was lost. Sharks rarely bite people when a whale is bleeding, but keep following the track of the blood. Brown took some of the men on board, and we in the spare boats, leaving only the doctor and two hands to take care of the ship, pulled quickly up and rescued the remainder.
We soon had the whale alongside; it was the largest we had caught—nearly a hundred feet in length; but we got very little oil out of it, for, having been fastened to previously, there was a huge swelling on its back as big as a tun butt, which was, no doubt, the cause of the blubber being so thin. We had still some spare space, and the crew were eager to catch the additional whales required to complete our cargo, that we might at length direct our course homeward. Although I should have before been the most eager of any to return to England, yet now, with the idea that had taken hold of me that Jack was somewhere in the neighbourhood, I was anxious to remain until I had found him. Jim shared my feelings, but I didn’t suppose anybody else did.
We remained a week or more, however, after killing the last huge whale which had cost us so much trouble, without seeing another, when the captain determined to steer for the Ladrone Islands. As we had now been some months without obtaining fresh provisions, we first directed our course for the Bonins, some degrees to the eastward of the coast of Japan. We understood that there were wild pigs, if not goats and sheep, on them. At all events, that fish could be caught in abundance off the shore. In a few days we sighted them, and ran under the lee of one of the group called South Island. Here the ship was hove-to, and a boat lowered, in which Mr Griffiths, the doctor, Horner, Jim and I, Brown and Miles Soper and Coal, with two other men, went. We took with us besides fishing-lines the whaling gear and a couple of muskets, three or four casks to fill with water, and provisions for the day, for we didn’t intend to get back to the ship till evening.