“Oh, no, lad,” he replied quickly. “If that was the reason, they ’d just stay with us—dog us about. They don’t do that, but—Aye, aye, sir.”
For Mr. Baker had come up to us, and was telling Peter to go to his boat, but not to hurry. They did not want any stir on the decks. Then he passed on to tell others of his crew the same thing. Mr. Macy was strolling about the deck on a similar errand. One by one the men drifted down to their boats, cast off the lashings, and stood with the falls in their hands, ready to lower. The Battles was still coming on, headed directly for us. She was a mile away, and the men stood like statues by their boats; the distance diminished to a half-mile and then to a quarter. There was a deep silence on the ship, while the noise of the surgeons at the operating-table rose to us over the starboard rail. They knew nothing of the Battles. When the schooner was a cable’s length away she was still heading directly for us, and seemed likely to strike us amidships.
It was too much for Mr. Baker. “Ahoy, there!” he roared. “Damn you, do you want to run us down?”
“Are you there?” cried a jeering voice from the Battles. “Why don’t you lower?”
As the sound of the voice reached us, however, the Battles kept off a little, so that she would just clear our stern. Captain Nelson nodded, and Mr. Macy lowered instantly, cast off, and the men pulled hard to intercept her. They did not quite succeed in doing that, and the Battles swept by with her main chains about six inches beyond the utmost reach of Hall’s boathook. Hall made an instant decision. Throwing down the boathook, he grabbed a harpoon, to which the whale line was already bent, and darted with all his force at the chains of the Battles. The harpoon stuck in the hull and quivered there for a moment, between the chains; then, as strain came on it, it pulled out, having nothing to hold it, the barb caught on the chains, and there they were towing as comfortably as ever they did behind a whale.
From the deck of the Battles there came a roar for a sharp spade, while Mr. Macy was exhorting his men to heave and heave hearty. There were only a few feet to gain, for the whaleboat was almost lapping the hull of the schooner. What they would have done when they had gained a place under her quarter I could not imagine. I wondered. Mr. Macy might have been in the same predicament, but it was not likely. He was not the man to go ahead without plan, and he was working as if for a definite end. What that plan was we were not to know, for the spades succeeded in severing the line before the hulls lapped, and the frayed end dropped into the water. It was fortunate, perhaps. What chance would six men have had against twenty or more?
In the brief struggle the Battles had gone on farther than she meant to, and was now some distance astern of us; but as soon as she had succeeded in dropping Mr. Macy she stood up along our starboard beam, a short distance away. Meanwhile, Mr. Baker’s boat had been lowered, taking the captain, and had pulled out a few boat’s lengths, and lay there, waiting for the Battles. The men who had been working on the carcass of the whale had stopped work, and stood watching to see what would happen.
The Battles came on until she was nearly abeam of us, then she slacked off her sheets, spilling the wind from her sails. Her crew seemed interested in the surgical operation on the whale.
“Did you find any?” hailed the man who seemed to be in command.
Captain Nelson paid no attention to this question, but his men pulled toward the schooner.