I wished fervently that we might see it. I watched for it with new interest, and whenever we raised a pod I hoped that they might take it into their heads to fight—fight among themselves, not us. I told Peter of my hope one day.
“Bless your heart, lad,” he said, unsmiling, which was good of him, “they won’t fight. They ’re in the same school. Wait until you see a schoolmaster take on a fellow of about the same size that ’s trying to get his job. Then you may see it.”
I knew nothing about schoolmasters, but I was ashamed to ask, and I said nothing. We were trying-out at the time, and the air was filled with the acrid black smoke of scrap, and the deck covered with oil mixed with soot. Only the day before we had raised a pod of large whales, and I had had great hopes, for they were of a size to make a good fight if they took a notion to. But nothing seemed farther from their intention than to fight among themselves. They led us a very pretty chase—from their point of view. We were pulling hard after them from sunrise until noon. Mr. Macy had the only chance. George Hall got an iron well into one, but it twisted off near the head, and all got away.
We had scarcely got the boats on the davits when a whale rose and spouted, not a hundred yards from the ship. Mr. Baker bellowed out for a crew on the instant, and I ran to his boat, the first one there. The Prince, Peter, Kane, and the Admiral were the others. We had the boat in the water, tumbled in, and were pulling for the whale in less than a minute. The Prince struck with both irons, and the whale sounded at once, with a grand flourish of flukes. He sounded out very nearly all our line; so nearly all of it that we bent on a drug, while Mr. Baker hailed the ship for more. Mr. Tilton’s boat was already in the water, beginning to pull toward us, but we held the whale at that depth, with but two flakes of line left in the tub.
Although that whale had not nearly had his spoutings out, he stayed down over an hour. Mr. Tilton stood by, his line bent to the end of ours, but Mr. Baker would not give up the whale until he had to. When the whale rose at last, he did not come up with a rush, on a breach, or half-breach, but he floated up, and came to the surface like an old waterlogged timber, plainly exhausted. There was nothing for Mr. Baker to do but to pull up and lance him at his leisure. Within ten minutes the whale was in his flurry, and in a short time after he was fast alongside the ship. Mr. Baker estimated him at eighty barrels, but by hard work we had him cut-in and on board by dark, and the carcass cut adrift.
It was now past the middle of the season, and we put into Wellington to fill our water-casks, to give the men a run ashore, and to get our mail. There was no mail for me, but I sent home another instalment of my journal, and I saw the town, which had little interest for me. There was only one town which I cared about seeing, and that was more than a year away, almost exactly on the other side of the world. I had a great desire to see at least one of the Marquesas Islands, but Wellington is not the Marquesas.
When we got back to our cruising grounds, whales were getting scarce and wild and difficult of approach. The big whales seemed to have gone. We did get one forty-barrel bull, one of a small school that was running to leeward from another ship. We saw the ship in the distance, and we saw her boats; but the whales were running faster than the boats could go. Our one bull we intercepted, but the rest ran away from us, straight to leeward, head out. It was useless to chase them. The strange boats did not get nearer to us than a mile and a half; then they gave it up, and went back to their ship, which bore away to the southward without an attempt to speak us.
Captain Nelson must have made up his mind very suddenly to get out of those waters. As soon as the trying-out of the forty-barrel bull was finished we stood away to the northward, for the Ellices, Gilberts, and Kingsmill; but most of all, I thought, to find those mysterious grounds where the Apollo had filled up. Just after we had filled away, Peter found me, and pointed in silence to the horizon. There was a faint haze, but I made out a pair of topmasts, with yards on them.
“A brig?” I asked, with but faint interest.