At Montevideo, which we reached in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the captain sent his letters and tried to ship another man. This he was unable to do, and he had to sail without him, a man short. The men were disappointed in their hoped-for liberty, only one boat’s crew getting two hours’ liberty. This crew was chosen with some care, as the men must be those who could be relied upon to return at the end of their two hours. We sailed at sunset, with some grumbling on the part of the men.

Nothing was done about the second mate’s berth for more than a week, and I did not happen to hear him mentioned, although I have an idea that the captain talked the matter over with Mr. Baker. At last, however, he acted, having concluded, as I supposed, that there was little chance of getting Mr. Wallet back. There was some show of letting the men choose, but it amounted to nothing. Macy was made fifth mate, and the other mates moved up a peg, so that Mr. Brown was second mate. That pleased me, and the appointment of Macy pleased Peter, for he said that there was not a better man on the ship. I agreed with him in that. Macy was one of the finest specimens of man I have ever seen. He was over six feet tall, with a perfectly proportioned figure, but his perfect proportions did not give an adequate idea of his size unless he stood beside another man. He had rather tightly curling flaxen hair—we called him “Towhead”—and deep blue eyes, and a smile that won the heart of every one on whom it shone. I felt that I should like to know him well, but it was not easy to know him well. There was about him a certain atmosphere of aloofness. No doubt this was due largely to a natural shyness; but, knowing less about such things then than I do now, I ascribed it to a feeling of superiority on his part. That was his reputation on the ship, a reputation which he did not deserve. He was a silent giant, not given to useless motions, but you felt his power and his alertness. It used to give me great pleasure merely to look at Macy.

Unfortunately, we were now one man short, and the vacancy was in Mr. Brown’s boat, for Starbuck had been moved into Macy’s place in Mr. Baker’s boat, again over the head of the man to whom the promotion would naturally fall. This was Ezra Winslow, a good-natured young fellow, but rather stupid, and not nearly as good a man as the Prince. There were few men in the whole crew who were anywhere near as good as the Prince, and there was another boatsteerer needed, and he was it. I do not know whether it was the usual practice, in cases of the promotion of mates, for the mates who were moved up to keep the boats and crews they had had before, but they did in this case. The Prince was therefore Mr. Brown’s boatsteerer. The vacancy in his boat was not filled for some time, but it worked out very well for me.

CHAPTER XVIII

There was no unfavorable change in the weather, and we cruised for three weeks without getting a whale, or even raising a spout. One morning, however, after a rather thick haze had cleared away somewhat, we found ourselves within half a mile of a pod of six or seven, which were lying on the surface, spouting lazily. They did not seem to be feeding, and I remember that I had heard a distant splash while it was still too thick to see them, and Peter, to whom I had turned inquiringly, had said that it was likely a whale breaching. Almost everybody on board had heard it, and the lookouts were doubled. They fully expected to sight whales, and they did sight them from the masthead before we could see them from the deck. No cry was given, but the men came down and reported.

There was hardly a breath of wind, and sound would carry easily in that weather. Indeed, it was uncanny. There seemed to be streaks or columns in the air which reflected the sound in the strangest ways, or acted like a lens for sound, at one moment utterly cutting off sounds that originated but a short distance away, and at the next moment sending to us clearly faint noises made by the pod of whales at a half-mile distance. Boats were lowered with the utmost care not to make a noise, even being put into the water one end first, to avoid any splash. The men were cautioned not to talk, and they sat silent in their boats, cast off the falls quietly, and took to their paddles as soon as the boats were in the water. It was of no use, however. The whales were keeping tabs on us, and went down quietly when a boat was within quarter of a mile of them, coming up half a mile away. It was exasperating. There were whales almost at the side, more than we had taken in six months, and we could not get near them; and after trying for hours, the boats were called back to the ship.

I do not remember that I felt any dis­ap­point­ment, however. To tell the truth, I was rather hoping for a pampero. It is not a fish, but a wind. I had some vague recollection of the brief description in Warren’s Physical Geography as a cold southwest wind which originates in the Andes, and sweeps with great violence over the pampas of Buenos Ayres, and is felt for some leagues at sea. My only comment on this description is that I don’t believe it for a minute. We were cruising just south of the latitude of Buenos Ayres, three or four hundred miles from the coast. No wind whose origin is purely local, in mountains even as high as the Andes, is at all likely to be of the violence of the sample we had, after traversing the width of a continent—narrow as it is at this latitude—and four hundred miles of ocean. They must be fed from the pampas, be supplied with energy, at least; and it seems much more reasonable to me to believe that these winds originate over the pampas. They are of the nature of a thunder-squall, and very probably of similar origin. But Warren can hardly be considered a recent authority.

I had my wish gratified, and I shall never make another wish of that kind. We were sailing along easily in a moderate northerly wind about the middle of the afternoon when the Admiral’s cry came down to us. There were two spouts to the eastward. I watched them rather listlessly, for I had rather lost interest in spouts. An albatross or a frigate bird would have roused much more interest. We were seeing albatrosses occasionally, and one had followed the ship for two days, picking up scraps from the galley, and finally following the carcass of a whale when we cut it adrift. But the whole whale business had become a matter of routine.

Three boats were called away, Mr. Baker’s, Mr. Brown’s, and Mr. Macy’s. I had to move, for I was in the way of one of them; and I moved as little as possible, and gave them no further attention. Then I heard Mr. Brown speaking to me.

“Here, Tim,” he said. “If you think you can pull one of these oars, tumble in here, but be quick about it.”