There She Blows! Or, The Log of the Arethusa

by William Hussey Macy

The manufacture of intoxicating liquor follows close upon the advent of white men as settlers or dwellers among savage tribes; indeed the sight of a whiskey still would have been as satisfactory evidence to the shipwrecked mariner of the presence of civilized men, as, it is said, was that of the gallows. With a rude apparatus, a liquor is distilled from the sap of the cocoanut tree, which is warranted to "kill at as many yards" as any article of tangle-foot dispensed over the bar of the most notorious "chainlocker" in New York or London. The exhilarating cordial, known among seamen by the name of "dent" (the word being a contraction of the Spanish aguardiente), is smuggled on board at almost every island where a white man has located himself; and it is well known that Jack will "suck the monkey" in whatever form or wherever he presents himself, as well in the Pacific as at the West Indies.

Here we parted company with our friends of the Leonidas, she being bound to Otaheite, to examine the head of her mainmast, which had been discovered to be rotten to a considerable depth. We worked slowly down to the westward, hauling to the wind during the night, and running off under easy sail in the daytime, so as to look the ground over carefully. We picked up another hundred barrels of oil before we reached the parallel of 160 degrees east, and as we had now twenty-one hundred, the remainder of our voyage was a sort of running cruise towards our last port and home.

In this longitude we hauled on the southern tack, running near Lord Howe's group and through the Solomon Archipelago. We took three small whales so near to one of the former, that, when the third one turned up, he was within less than a hundred yards of the reef, the savages yelling at us from the shore. The ship was about a mile and a half from us, with two whales fluked alongside, and carrying sail to hold her position. As the old man dared not run off to take the third whale alongside, he sent the other two boats to our assistance, with orders to tow the whale on a wind. We set our sails and took the oars, and accompanied by howling barbarians both on shore and in canoes, we towed the whale about ten miles to the southward, until clear of the island and adjacent reefs, so that the ship could come down to us without danger. During the four or five hours that we were thus employed, those in the canoes kept within a short distance outside of us, while their comrades on the beach, women, children, and all, travelled along shore abreast of us, an infernal serenade rising on both sides of us without cessation. They would have attacked us if they had dared; but, though of course constantly on our guard, we did not much fear them. They mustered about fifty canoes, containing between two and three hundred warriors, but dared not venture within reach of our whaling weapons. They at one time seemed to be making preparations to give us a volley of stones, at long shot, but the captain, seeing a suspicious movement among them, fired the six-pounder, which was kept trained upon them all the time, and sent a shot whizzing over their heads, which had the effect of cooling their ardor. They were more wary after this, and made no further hostile demonstrations, but escorted us the whole distance, and lay on their paddles until the ship had approached quite near us, evidently waiting in the hope that some accident or turn of fortune would place us in their power. As a general rule, savages will not make an attack, unless all the circumstances are overwhelmingly in their favor. We saved our three whales, and made a safe offing with the ship, before night, but the wild din of their voices seemed to ring in my ears for a week afterwards. These people had the gristles of their noses split, and many of them had inserted large ornaments (?) of shell or bone, which hung down, so as in a great measure to hide their mouths. They were a hideous looking race, and I confess to a decided reluctance to becoming a subject of their tender mercies.

At San Cristoval, one of the Solomon Islands, we drove a smart trade for yams and fruit, the currency used here being hoop-iron, cut into pieces a few inches long, like the money of the ancient Spartans in the days of Lycurgus. Here, for the first time, we met with people possessing the characteristic of the African, for there are two great families of races in Polynesia. These Ethiops of the Pacific, or Oceanic negroes as they are called, are even more repulsive in appearance than the wearers of the ponderous nasal ornaments at Lord Howe's group. Their hair, or wool, has the true African kink in it, both ends seeming to grow into the skull, and is turned a dull reddish color by the application of lime, or something of that nature, giving them the appearance of having the head protected by what seamen call a "thrummed mat." The teeth are colored or discolored by the use of the betel-nut, till they are darker than their skins; in fact those of men past middle age are jet black. But they seem well-disposed to whites, and inoffensive, and our intercourse with them was marked by no unpleasant occurrence. The canoes used by these people are very light, and neatly ornamented, giving evidence of considerable taste and skill in their construction, while the dexterity of the natives in balancing and managing them seems perfectly miraculous, as they have no beam to spare and no outriggers; yet they come off several miles to sea in them, keeping their equilibrium seemingly without difficulty, and jeered and shouted with true negro delight at our bungling attempts to manage them.

We pressed through Indispensable Straits, continuing our running cruise towards the coast of Australia, but without taking any more oil till we reached the latitude of twenty-two degrees, being about midway between Booby Shoal and Cato's Bank, when two large sperm whales were raised in the morning, and down we went in pursuit. The waist boat got the lead and was soon fast to one of them and her line going out of the tub at a rate that promised soon to empty it. Seeing this state of things, our line was cast off from the craft, and I stood ready to throw the end into the other boat; but the second mate, anxious to "drown him out" without bending on another line, snubbed him too hard and parted. We pulled ahead in pursuit of the whale, but when he came up again he was pushing to the windward much faster than any boat could pull. There was nothing for us but to return to the ship and take the boats up, very ill-satisfied with our forenoon's work, for we had lost an iron and nearly a tubful of line, and had nothing to show for it.

We made sail on a wind, and soon after raised a whale on the weather beam coming to leeward. From his actions, as at times he lashed the water into foam, we were satisfied that it was the same whale that we had struck. Soon another was seen off the lee beam coming to windward. We hauled aback and lowered away again, spreading our chances well. The two whales came together, and jogged to leeward in company. The next chance fell to our boat, and, as the mate called me up to dart, I perceived that the whale with the iron hanging at his side was farthest from me, and, seeing not much choice in them for size, I pitched my iron into the other one. The other boats were on hand to assist us, and we soon killed and secured this whale, while the wounded one again escaped, spouting strong and clear.

We had light airs for three or four days succeeding this, and were not slow to express our discontent, as we made but little progress towards Sydney, the port we were all so anxious to see. We had cut and boiled out our first whale, and still the wind was lighter than ever, almost gone entirely, while our ship, seeming as impatient as ourselves, lay rolling on the glassy sea, when a black object was seen from the masthead, five or six miles off, abeam of us, tossing into view on the swell, and disappearing again; and, after examining it through the spyglass, we were satisfied that it was a dead whale. So our boat was lowered away to examine him, and found a large whale, but little blasted, having been dead, apparently about forty-eight hours. We cut out the iron from his side and found, as we expected, the name "Arethusa," underrun our line, and saved the whole of it, set a waif for the other boats, and towed him down to the ship in triumph. We now had reason to congratulate ourselves upon the light airs that had been the occasion of so much growling, and instead of having lost a line, with nothing to show for it, as at one time seemed to be the result of our attack upon these two whales, we had saved it, and added a hundred and fifty barrels of sperm oil to our cargo.

The next day we got the breeze, and trimmed to it as soon as we had finished cutting. A few days found us running down the coast of New Holland, with the land well aboard and a fair wind, only thirty miles between us and the entrance to our port, and every prospect of being at anchor before night. But we were doomed to disappointment, for the wind suddenly shifted to the southward, heading us off, and blew up a gale about as fast as we were able to strip the canvas off the ship. Noon saw us lying to, on the off-shore tack, under a goose-winged maintopsail and storm staysails. The wind still increased, and we rode out a wild night under this short sail, while the wind, meeting a counter current which sets to the southward along this coast, occasioned a short, chopping sea, which knocked us about rather roughly, and, in one of her heavy lurches, the waist boat was rolled under and lost. This was the only accident we met with, however; the gale blew out in twenty-four hours and the wind having settled light from the southward, we were compelled to make out our log for four or five days at least. So we made all sail, and boarded our tacks, standing off and on.

While we were beating here, having stood well in on the inshore stretch, a small steamer, which plied as a packet between Sydney and Newcastle, passed us, shearing nearer as she approached, enough to read the name on our stern. The sight of a steamboat was, of itself, a sufficient novelty to fix the attention of every man on deck, but what a burst of emotion greeted the appearance of a woman on the deck of the steamer! The word was passed below, and the other watch were all on deck in a twinkling to look at her. She appeared to be the only lady passenger on board, or at least the only one who was able to show herself on the upper deck. At that distance, it was difficult to say whether she was young and beautiful, or otherwise, but she was at least a white woman in a civilized dress, an object which had not greeted our eyes for more than two years. We had taken our last look at a phenomenon of this kind when we left Talcahuano, four months out.