“No, sir—” I began. Then I felt myself growing red, my face and my neck, even to my body and the roots of my hair, and I stammered and stopped.
“Never mind. You got down quicker than you will again for a long time, and I was afraid you might have trouble. There was some excuse for you. I ’ve been scared, myself.”
“Then, Captain Nelson, may I go up again?”
“Now? What do you want to go up again now for? Nothing to see up there. See if the steward does n’t want you.”
We stood on to leeward for the rest of the day without sighting the boat. I was getting really worried about it. At sunset we shortened sail, as we did always on cruising grounds. The light sails were taken in, the topsail close-reefed, and the ship was brought close to the wind, lying to during the night, so as to stay as nearly as possible in one place. If we took any chances of overrunning the boat, there was some danger that it might be lost in earnest, while, if we kept to windward of it, there was little chance of that. I stayed on deck after supper as long as I could keep my eyes open, in the hope of seeing the flare which Wright had mentioned, but I saw none. By two bells—nine o’clock—I was so sleepy that I fell asleep halfway up the main rigging, and just caught myself as I was falling, my arm hooked around the shrouds. Men sometimes fall sound asleep on a yard, toward the end of a long watch, hanging on unconsciously by their shoulders and their legs, with an arm hooked around a stay. No officer will arouse a man in this condition, for there is great danger that he will fall overboard in his instinctive start at a command. I did not know of this at the time, but I was a little frightened at my narrow escape from a fall, and I went below and turned in at once.
I fell asleep as soon as I touched my bunk, and slept until morning. I remembered very vaguely that there was some unusual noise over my head at some time during the night, and that afterward I heard a noise in the cabin, but I did not rouse enough to wonder at it. It was only in the morning that it seemed to have any significance, and as soon as I was really awake I got into my clothes hurriedly and went on deck. There was Mr. Baker’s boat on the davits, where she belonged, and there was Peter Bottom smiling at me, and there, alongside to starboard, was our first whale, floating on his side, with his flukes toward the bow, the water about him filled with sharks.
CHAPTER VIII
The water actually boiled with sharks, feasting and fighting. There was a multitude of them, big fellows, from six to twelve feet long, and they took bites about the size of a football right out of the whale’s side. It was hard to see how they could do it, with their projecting snouts, and I did not make it out very well with all my watching. A shark would glide directly at the whale, about a foot or two under the surface, there would be the flash of whitish belly as he turned over, and he would glide on under, or turn without stopping; but there was always the neat, round hole where he had scooped out his mouthful. Two of the biggest sharks repeatedly threw themselves up on the carcass, from which, of course, they slipped off immediately; but they always left smooth, round holes behind them.
“And they take a good quart of oil at every mouthful,” said Peter’s voice at my elbow. I had been so intent on the sharks that I had not heard him come. “Those big fellows take more. Three of their bites would make a gallon of oil.”
I seized the chance to get from Peter the story of the capture of the whale. It was a short story in the telling, possibly because he saw that I was as much interested in the sharks as I was in the story; but I think Peter would have made no long story of it in any case.