She Blows! And Sparm at That!

by William John Hopkins

Instantly I was all attention. I jumped for the boat, but stopped.

“The captain said,” I objected, “that I could n’t go until he—”

“Captain’s orders,” he interrupted sharply. “Go or not, but be quick or the other boats ’ll get away first.”

I made no reply, but gave a little nervous laugh of delight, and tumbled in. I did not know whether I could row one of the long, heavy oars or not, but I could take two hands to it, and I had rowed all my life in every kind of a boat, light and heavy. We took the water, and cast off the falls, and shoved clear. Then we stepped the mast and set the sail, and were off after my first whale. All the men were kind and helpful, but the Prince took me especially under his wing, and told me what my duties were in stepping the mast. When we were under sail he gave me rapid instructions as to my duties in meeting every emergency that ever arose in connection with the capture of a whale. I could not remember a quarter of them. It was all I could do to understand them.

Fortunately I did not have to remember. No emergency arose. We came up with our whale without much pulling, the Prince planted both his irons, and we backed off furiously. The whale stopped, astonished, Mr. Baker came up on the other side, and Starbuck got an iron fast; but not before the whale had recovered his power of motion, so that Starbuck’s iron entered at the small, and not near the side fin, where he had meant to place it. Mr. Baker’s boat was deluged with water by a sweep of the flukes, and the whale was under way, head out. Mr. Macy, I saw later, had struck the other whale, and was having no trouble.

Our whale had turned about to the eastward, and was running. We had to give him line at first, and the whale line went twisting and writhing out past me like a living snake, making a scraping, hissing noise on my oar handle. I shrank away from it. Then, with another turn around the loggerhead, it straightened and tautened, and did not go so fast, but edged by me foot by foot; and the spray began to rise in a miniature cascade on each side of the bow. Then another turn around the loggerhead, and the progress of the line past me was by inches, slower and slower, and I could hear it creaking. Then it stopped, and we were fairly off on my first sleigh-ride behind a whale. The Prince had gone aft and taken the steering oar, and Mr. Brown had come forward.

The boats were going at a rate which seemed terrific, nine or ten knots. Our boat rolled viciously in the cross-sea, and veered and bucked. I could see the Prince putting all his strength and weight on the long steering oar, first one way and then the other, to meet her as she yawed, and keep her on a straight course. The cascades of spray rose from her keel now, about a foot or two aft of the stem, higher than the gunwale; and the northerly wind caught one of them, and blew it inboard. I was drenched with it, and so was the man aft of me. We seemed to leap from sea to sea. When I gathered courage enough to look at Mr. Baker’s boat, I saw that that was a mistaken impression; but I felt as if I were on a shingle swung skittering along the top of the waves at the end of a pole.

Mr. Brown ordered us to heave in on the line. We strained our backs to the last muscle, but could only gain a fraction of an inch. Mr. Baker’s crew could do no better, and there was nothing for it but to hang on and wait for the whale to tire and slacken speed. I looked back—I continued to look back—and saw the Clearchus already hull down. I could see no sign of Mr. Macy. I watched the ship until she sank to her tops, then farther; then I could no longer make her out at all. And still that whale kept up his furious gait, head out, as though he were bound to take us to the Cape of Good Hope or to the Carroll grounds at least.

We must have been going on in that way for an hour and a half or more before the whale showed any sign of weariness. It needed a man of more experience than I had to tell the symptoms, or to perceive that our speed was slackening. Mr. Baker’s boat was just about abeam of ours, and a couple of oars’ lengths away. He had dropped back a boat’s length or so to avoid fouling us, but the two boats were within easy speaking distance, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown looked at each other, and spoke at the same instant.

“Heave?”