I stuck around for some time, watching their skilful, leisurely movements. I knew good ship carpentry when I saw it, for I had been observing it all my short life, and I had absorbed a good deal of the methods. My father’s men worked rather faster, but not so very much. There is more actually accomplished by making your work count, and not wasting a stroke, than in merely keeping very busy. Peter was a better workman than the sailmaker, and there was no object whatever in working fast, for they had plenty of time.
The boat was done, as good as new, in ten days, and then painted, and lashed, bottom up, on top of the after house. One result of Peter’s work upon this boat was that thereafter he was a sort of unofficial ship’s carpenter.
CHAPTER XX
We had the usual variations in weather, some good, some bad, but none very bad, to the Carroll grounds. For two thirds of the way the wind was mostly pretty strong from the west or southwest, giving the Clearchus what she liked best; for the last third of the way it drew in from the southeast, although we were not at any time in the region of the steady southeast trades, merely touching upon the border of that region toward the very last of the run. We ran into no gales, and made a passage of about five weeks, arriving on the Carroll grounds the last week in March. We then shortened sail, and began to cruise. It was the captain’s intention to quarter the ground thoroughly once, making slowly to the southeast, which was the windward side, and then to beat up for the Cape.
For a week we beat back and forth in fine weather without a sign of a whale. I had almost ceased to think of them, and spent my spare time in surreptitious games with Peter or with the group of men who were usually gathered about him; or I stood by the windlass or sat between the knightheads—anywhere where I could not be spied from aft—and looked out ahead over the white-capped seas, feeling the brisk wind on my cheeks, and listening to the noise of the water under the bows, and to the gentle creaking of the spars and rigging. To me those are inexpressibly soothing sounds; they have always been so, and are to this day. The noises of the life of the ship—not very loud at their worst, in such a case—are far behind you, and they come faintly to your ears, as if from another world. They do not seem real, as do the bubbling of the water under the bow, and the wash of it as it passes astern, and the faint noise of breaking seas, and the soft sound of the wind on the sails.
That pleasant mode of life was not to last forever. One afternoon I was lying on my back on the heel of the bowsprit. I had just finished my chores after dinner, and had lain down to gaze up at the sails, full and straining, and at the sky above them. My gaze travelled up the foremast, past the topsails, which were braced well around, for we were sailing with the wind forward of the beam. The fore truck described slow ellipses against the sky, and I was fascinated in watching them. Now and then I caught a glimpse, past the bellying topsail, of the masthead man. He seemed very far up. He was leaning wearily against the hoops, as if he might have been asleep. Suddenly he straightened alertly. I knew what to expect then, and I sat up as the cry floated down to me; then I jumped to my feet, and ran to Mr. Brown’s boat.
There were two spouts, about three miles to leeward, and the whales seemed to be travelling at about the same rate as the ship, and pretty near together. The spouts rose as regularly as the exhaust of a tugboat, although nowhere near as fast; there were ten or twelve seconds between them. The ship was laid around on a course nearly parallel with that of the whales, and we waited to see if they would not go down to feed. There was no sign of their doing so, however, and after waiting over twenty minutes, we lowered three boats. Our boat—that means Mr. Brown’s—was one of the three. I took my place in it without asking leave, but as Mr. Brown looked right at me, and made no objection, and as the Prince even smiled at me, I thought it was probably what was expected.
LOWERING BOATS
By hard pulling we got right in the course of the whales, Mr. Baker and ourselves taking the farther one, and Mr. Macy the nearer. Our whale was a little in advance of the other. Then we waited, our oars in our hands, to be ready for any change of course of the whales. Approaching a whale head on is one of the favorite ways, for a whale cannot see anything directly ahead of him, strange and inconvenient as that may seem. The whales came on in a business-like way, rising to spout, then pitching under, until they were perhaps within fifty or sixty feet of the boats. The Prince was all set to strike, and the four oarsmen gripping their oars hard, I, at least, with my nerves on edge. Then the whales brought up suddenly; stopped as completely as if they had run into a wall. Something had excited their suspicion, although the men in the boats were as still as death. Our whale—I should not have called him ours so soon—raised his head from the water, as if listening, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown signalled the men to pull up. It was only a little way, and the two boats almost leaped from the water. I could see nothing of the whale, pulling, as I was, with my back to him, and my eyes glued to the oar of the man in front of me, but I could imagine that whale pricking up his ears, if he had had any. Mr. Baker’s boat was just abeam of us, to take him on his other side. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the men in her laying to it, and the spray flying from her bow.