The boats went on, getting nearer the course of the whale, which continued to swim with great deliberation. He seemed to be bent upon getting nowhere in particular, and likely to achieve his purpose. By the time the ship had got on her new course Mr. Brown had already taken in his sail and got his mast down, and the men were paddling until the whale should discover them. Mr. Wallet should have done the same thing. He was near enough; but he delayed, as he did invariably, a little too long. Just after he had given the order, and while his men were busy with the mast,—they had made a little more noise than necessary, perhaps,—the whale saw them, no doubt imperfectly. He hesitated for an instant, then raised his flukes and lobtailed, the blow on the water making a noise which sounded, to us on the ship, like the report of a big gun, and raised a cataract of spray and green water. This drenched the men in Mr. Brown’s boat, who had paddled up on him from behind and were trying to get into position to sink their irons just behind the side fin. Wright was standing in the bow, a harpoon in his hands, and the boat was just even with the flukes. I saw the men suddenly give way hard—they had no time to change to their oars; then the whale started for Mr. Wallet’s boat, and Wright let go both his irons, getting both fast, but well back toward the small instead of near the side fin, where he had hoped to place them.
The sting of the irons only served to make him the more furious and bent upon destruction, and he rushed full-tilt upon Mr. Wallet. Mr. Brown dropped back, the men put aside their paddles, and I saw two or three turns taken about the loggerhead. Then Wright came aft; and Mr. Brown took his place in the bow, with a lance in his hand. A thin wreath of blue smoke rose from the loggerhead, although they were throwing water upon the line. Wright took another turn, and the boat plunged wildly through the sea after the whale.
The whale seemed to be annoyed by the drag of the boat all on one side of him. I thought I saw him gnash his jaws, although they were kicking up such a fuss that I could not be sure. The ship was less than half a mile away, and the ship and the whale were slowly working nearer each other. It must have been the drag of the boat which caused the whale to miss Mr. Wallet’s boat, which he did by a very narrow margin, coming up for the attack about an oar’s length from the starboard side, and abeam. That seemed to put him beside himself with fury, and he turned at once upon Mr. Brown, shaking his head and gnashing his jaws. As he turned, George Hall saw his chance and planted his irons deep in his other side. If Mr. Wallet had been of the quality of Hall or of some others of his men, he would have done uniformly better.
Hall’s irons served to confuse the whale a little, although not to shake his purpose of destroying Mr. Brown’s boat. He hesitated for an instant, but immediately went on, and disappeared a short distance from the boat. He had not sounded, however, which could be told from the way Mr. Wallet’s line was going out. Hall had changed places with Mr. Wallet, and had three or four turns around the loggerhead, although not enough to check the line entirely. I saw the men in Mr. Brown’s boat back water as hard as they could, and the next instant the whale’s huge head shot out of the water just ahead of the boat, the jaws gnashing. The lower jaw seemed to be crumpled up at the tip. He just missed the boat completely, but got the whale line between his jaws, and chewed it, getting a tooth through it, as I found out later, and fraying the line badly.
He came up out of the water so far that his side fin showed, and the ends of Hall’s harpoons, and Mr. Brown seized that moment to lance him. He got in two thrusts with the lance, and when he withdrew it, its shank was bent almost at right angles. He did not stop to straighten it, but seized another, which, however, he had no chance to use.
As the whale went on, Mr. Brown’s line slipped off his tooth. The teeth of the sperm whale are roughly conical in shape, and curved slightly backward, with a considerable space between them; and there are no teeth in the upper jaw. This will account for the fact that the line was not bitten in two at once. The lines were crossed, too, for Wright’s harpoons were in the left side of the whale, while the boat from which they had come was now on his right side; and Mr. Wallet’s boat had been on his right side when Hall planted his irons, but was now behind him and well to his left. Both lines had slipped over his back. Mr. Brown’s men had been unable to take in the slack of their line as fast as the whale had come, and by some mischance the whale had got a turn around his jaw. By a further mischance, the whale turned again in the same direction, twisting the lines over his back, and going over Mr. Wallet’s line this time. He was pretty well tangled in the lines, and Mr. Wallet’s was wrapped about his body once. Mr. Brown’s men were heaving in on their line as fast as they could, and when, in the whale’s frantic career, it suddenly came taut, it gripped his jaw like an Indian halter. This seemed to throw him into a frenzy. He stopped, lobtailed several times, as rapidly as such a huge mechanism can, lashing the water into foam, and caught sight of the ship, not a quarter of a mile away. Before either of the boats could haul up on him, he had started for her at full speed. Mr. Brown’s line parted at the frayed spot; and before the whale had gone very far, Mr. Wallet reached down to the hatchet at his knees, raised it above his head, and cut.
What impelled Mr. Wallet to cut I do not know. Very probably he was simply afraid—panic-struck; although cutting loose from a fighting whale, vicious and frenzied, and bent upon the destruction of the boats, is perhaps not uncommon. But this whale, although vicious and frenzied, had done no harm to the boats, so far, and cutting did not seem justified. It seemed even less justified to the officers and men than it did to me. As Peter told me, in confidence, he thought there must be something wrong with that whale’s sight or sense of direction, for he had missed his aim every time; missed by a little, but he had missed. It was not necessary for him to say what he thought of our second mate for cutting. I knew well enough.
The whale’s very obvious intention was to ram us, and we knew what the consequences might be. The wheel was thrown hard over, and two of the officers ran below. I have said that the old Clearchus was slow in minding her helm, but she never seemed so slow as she did on that occasion. Mr. Tilton and Mr. Baker had taken the two bomb guns, which the men had brought up from below, before the ship had changed her course five degrees. She went a little faster after that, but her course was not changed many degrees when the whale was upon us. The two bomb lances were fired over the quarter when he was less than half a dozen fathoms away. They must have made a tremendous commotion in the interior of the whale, for I could see him shiver, but he did not stop swimming immediately, although there was no power in his movements. He came on, and struck the ship a glancing blow on the quarter which shook her from keel to trucks, and I thought the foretopgallantmast would come down. The Admiral, up there in the hoops, was shaken about like a pea in a box.
After the blow, the whale stopped swimming, and rested quietly just astern of the ship—except for his shivering. It was then that Peter remarked to me on his defective sight, and observed further that if he had had a grain of sense, he would have taken the chance of Mr. Wallet’s cutting to get clean away, which he might have done perfectly well. Then Mr. Baker, thinking to put a quick end to him, I suppose, fired another bomb lance into him. This had just the opposite effect. The whale stirred—no doubt he would have roared if that were customary with whales—and turned, and made for the boats.
He missed again, but passed between them with open jaws, so close to Mr. Wallet’s boat that he gathered in and crushed to splinters both oars on the port side, and almost swamped the boat with the wave he made. Mr. Brown was a little astern of Mr. Wallet, and as the whale passed him, he gave a deep thrust with the lance. He had no time to withdraw it, although he tried to, and bent the shank of the lance in his attempt.