“I ’ve known about that for some time, Wallet,” said Mr. Baker; “and let me tell you that you ’re in much more danger of going to hell in the next hour than I am. A whaleboat ’s the safest thing that rides the sea. Maybe you did n’t know it. And you ’d better shorten sail some more,” he added, “if you hope to ride it out.”
For the only answer to this the mate—if he was the mate—and Mr. Wallet both turned and looked up at the sails. The men who had gone aloft had been engaged in reefing the topsails in a very leisurely manner. Now they had to put in another reef in response to orders yelled by the mate, and they worked faster. Mr. Baker came back to the whale, and the Battles slowly drifted to the southward, taking in her great mainsail and her foresail and two of her jibs, leaving her under staysail and double-reefed topsails. By the time that was done, she had got well away from us, and the black cloud covered half the heavens. Mr. Baker had rowed up to the whale, and had deliberately planted another iron deep in the small, near his first one. I asked no questions, but Mr. Brown must have read them in my face.
“Getting ready to ride it out, Tim,” he said, smiling kindly. We had nothing to do, having fifteen or twenty fathoms of line out, and he was leaning against the cleat, watching. “A whale ’s a ready made sea-anchor, if he only stays afloat; and I guess he will. And we shall be in his lee, where the seas won’t be quite so high—although there ’s not much of the carcass showing.”
I turned and looked at the whale doubtfully.
“I should think, sir,” I ventured, “that Mr. Baker might foul us, or we him, if he has about the same length of line that we have.”
“No,” Mr. Brown replied, smiling again. “A drifting body always drifts broadside to the wind—to the resistance. I could prove that to you by mathematics if we had the chance, and if I had n’t forgotten the proof. But experience proves the proof to be correct, which is much more convincing than mere mathematics. You notice.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir, I will, if—”
Mr. Brown laughed. “If we get out of this, eh? We shall. Make your mind easy.”
The carcass of the whale was lying nearly east and west under the northerly wind. As the squall—pampero or whatever it was—advanced, the wind dropped, until we were heaving on an oily swell in a flat calm. The men in Mr. Baker’s boat took that chance of backing water, and of working the body of the whale slowly around until it lay very nearly north and south, while the squall was coming from the southwest. Then there was nothing to do but to watch the clouds, and to wait for the wind to strike.
The edge of the cloud seemed to be directly over us, writhing and twisting, and it was almost as dark as night.