The whale had gone off with two irons, two tubs of line, and a drug. The chance was that we should never see any of them again, for it was almost too dark to see anything, and it would be pitch-black in half an hour. We turned and pulled easily toward the ship, which was showing a light, two miles to windward. The boat lanterns were set before we had gone far.
We had made perhaps half the distance to the ship when we heard, out of the darkness ahead, shouts and commands and a commotion in the water that was more than the wash of the sea. Mr. Brown peered ahead.
He could not make out much. “Stand up, Tony,” he said, “and see what you make it. By the sounds it ’s Mr. Baker, and he ’s fast.”
The Prince stood up. Those black men have a strange faculty of seeing in the dark. He reported that it was Mr. Baker fast to a whale, and he thought it was our whale.
By this time we were almost up with the commotion. Mr. Brown headed us over that way, and we pulled harder. As soon as we were within hail he called out, asking if the whale had irons in him. I could not see what the state of affairs was, for I had to keep my eyes astern; but I judged from the sounds that Mr. Baker was close alongside, and was lancing, or just about to. The answer was that the whale had irons in him.
“Those irons are mine,” Mr. Brown shouted, “and I want to kill him!”
I was surprised, for I did not see then, and I do not see now, why it should be any pleasure to a man like Mr. Brown to pump a lance up and down in the in’ards of a whale. If it had been Mr. Baker I could have understood it.
Between grunts and curses Mr. Baker replied that it was too late, for he had just attended to that matter, and we had better go astern a little, as the whale was going into his flurry.
Mr. Brown said nothing—there was nothing to say—and the whale proceeded to turn fin out without any flurry at all.
Mr. Baker then set his lights to signal the ship, and she bore down upon us. It was a long, hard job getting that whale alongside in the pitch darkness and the heavy sea, and it was not done and the men on board until very late in the evening. Even then it was not done, we found. Lying hove to, as we were, the ship forging ahead a little, with a very heavy sea running, she would bring up, at every roll, with a tremendous jerk on the fluke chain. At last the chain parted—shackle pin snapped—and the carcass began to drift away. It was Mr. Macy’s watch, and he sprang quickly into the quarter boat, bent the line to an iron, and struck as the body drifted beneath him. He checked it with the line, and managed to get another iron in, fast to a second line, before it had drifted out of reach. Then the lines were paid out to their whole length, and the spring of the lines held the carcass until sunrise. In the morning we had all our work to do over again, but we got the blubber hove aboard before sunset. The whale made sixty-five barrels.