Part 9 (1/2)

From the summit of almost every wave I stood up and gazed about me--especially ahead. Behind were only the ravenous waves seeking to overtake and swamp me. Ahead I hoped to see the vapor of some steamer, or, at least, the bare poles of a sailing vessel that could rescue me from my perilous situation.

I dreaded another night. Indeed, I did not see how I could sail the Wavecrest until morning without either food or sleep. To lash the tiller and let the sloop drive on was too reckless a course to even contemplate.

A man lost in a forest, or on a desert, may be lonely; but a voyager alone on the trackless and empty ocean is in far worse condition, believe me! Not only is he lost, but the elements themselves are continually buffeting him. In all this dreary day there was not a second in which my life was not threatened.

Finally when I knew there could not be many hours more of daylight, upon rising to the summit of a great billow, I beheld something riding the seas not far ahead. For some reason I had not seen the bulk of this strange apparition before and at first I was sure it was the turtle-turned hulk of a wreck.

But as the Wavecrest sped on, bringing me nearer and nearer to the object, I saw that I must be wrong. It was not shaped like a s.h.i.+p's hull although it was black and clumsy enough. But immediately about it the waves seemed to be calm. At least no waves broke and foamed about the floating ma.s.s.

I watched the thing eagerly, although I could not hope for rescue under such a guise. It was not, I was almost instantly sure, a vessel of any kind; as the Wavecrest kept on her course, which brought me directly upon the object, I was not long at a loss to identify it.

Although I had seldom been far out of sight of land myself, and had never seen any ocean creature bigger than a blackfish (not the tautog, but the pilot-whale) I had listened to the stories of old whalemen along the Bolderhead docks, and I was pretty sure that I had sighted one of those great mammals--a creature of the sea which is no more a fish than a horse or a cow is a fish, yet is the greatest wonder of marine life.

Beside, the peculiar condition of the sea immediately about the object revealed its ident.i.ty. The whale was dead, I was sure. Otherwise it would not have been at the surface so long in such a gale. And being dead, and the seabirds and shark-fish having got at its carca.s.s before the storm, there was good reason for the waves not breaking over it.

The dead whale lay in a slick, or ”sleep,” as some old whalemen p.r.o.nounce the word, and hope revived in my troubled mind the instant I realized what the object was, and its condition. The waves were following me as hungrily as ever; at any moment the sloop might be overwhelmed. But once let me get the Wavecrest in the lee of this dead whale, I could bid defiance to the storm. There I could outride the gale and, when it was fair again, set the sloop's nose toward the distant mainland.

With rare good fortune the sloop needed little guidance to reach the dead whale. My original course had been aimed for the huge beast. As the Wavecrest gained upon it the monster was revealed, lying partly on its side, all of fifty feet from tail to nose. Of course there were no seabirds upon the carca.s.s now, nor did I see the triangular fin of a shark anywhere about. They had ripped and torn at the carca.s.s sufficiently, however, to release copiously the oil from the casing of blubber, or fat, with which the whale is entirely covered.

My Wavecrest bore down upon the becalmed circle and suddenly I found the waves heaving smoothly under the sloop instead of breaking all about her. I ran to the canvas and stowed it quickly, then brought the sloop around into the lee of the huge bulk of the whale. I had a broken-shanked harpoon and a boathook. I plunged these both into the carca.s.s and then attached the Wavecrest, bows and stern, to these strange mooring-posts.

There she was, as safe as though we were in a landlocked harbor, rising and falling with a motion by no means unpleasant. The exuding oil made a charmed circle about the sloop, into which the agencies of the gale could not venture. The wind wailed as madly across the sea, and the sea itself, at a little distance, tumbled, and burst in a most chaotic manner; but here in the slick I lay at peace--and grateful indeed I was for this remarkable haven.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH I AM A TERRIFIED WITNESS OF A WONDERFUL PHENOMENON

Evening was dropping down and I was woefully hungry. Being sure that the Wavecrest was safely moored to the body of the dead leviathan, I set about correcting the need which preyed upon me. I was thankful, indeed, that I had stocked my larder so well on that last day at Bolderhead.

There was plenty of water, too. I could ride out a week's storm here beside the whale I was very sure, and then have plenty of provisions to serve me until I could beat back to the mainland.

I got out my lanterns, filled and trimmed them, and cutting steps in the side of the whale with the boat-hatchet, I mounted to the top of the great body and there stuck my oar upright in the blubber and hung a lantern to it. I was pretty sure that no vessel would pa.s.s that signal light without investigating, even in the gale.

I made a very comfortable supper indeed. I managed now to force the cabin door and closed the sliding hatch. Then I warmed the cabin well with the spirit stove, stripped off my wet clothes, and got into dry garments. I went out on deck at nine o'clock, saw that my moorings were fast and the lanterns burning brightly, and then turned in. After the uncertainties of the day and the lack of sleep suffered the night before, I slept as soundly when I now turned in on one of the bunks as ever I did in my own bed at home!

At daybreak--another drab dawning of the new day--I was up and climbed the whale for the lantern. In its place I left attached to the upright oar a s.h.i.+rt to flutter in the wind for a signal. I hoped that any vessel pa.s.sing near enough to see my signal would stop for me. But of one thing I was sure: If it chanced that a whaling s.h.i.+p came within sight of the dead leviathan my peril would soon be over. This huge beast had not been long dead and it would be all clear gain to any ”blubber boiler” that chanced to pa.s.s that way.

Nor was the possibility of being rescued by a whales.h.i.+p so slight as it would have been a few years before. There were for two decades, few whaling barks put forth from the New England ports; but of late years there is either a greater demand for whale-oil, or the cachelot (the sperm whale) is becoming more frequently seen both in northern and southern seas, and is being hunted both by steam vessels and by the old-time whaling s.h.i.+ps.

I didn't know where I was--that is, my position in the North Atlantic; but I believed that I had sailed so far and so fast in the sloop that I was about midway of the course of the British steam lines running 'twixt Halifax and the Bermudas. Those two ports are between seven and eight hundred miles apart, and I suspected I was nearer one or the other than I was to Boston! I knew I had done some tall sailing since being swept out of Bolderhead Harbor.

After having cooked and eaten a hearty breakfast, despite the blowing of the gale--for dirty weather prevailed and rain swept down in torrents every hour or two--I set about making such slight repairs as I could with the tools and materials I had at hand. And while thus engaged I made a discovery that--to say the least--startled me.

Dragging over the bows of the Wavecrest was the cable by which she had been moored in Bolderhead Harbor. I had never chanced to draw it aboard. Now I did so. It was only a bit, some three or four feet long.

And instead of finding it frayed and broken by the strain of the sloop as she dragged at her old anchorage, I found that the hemp had been cut sharply across. Nothing less than a knife--and a sharp one--had severed that cable when it was taut!

The appearance of the bit of rope gave me such a jolt that I sat down and stared at it. I had been quite sure that Paul Downes and his friends knew I was aboard the Wavecrest when they nailed me into the cabin.

But it really never crossed my mind that they had deliberately cut the sloop adrift. But here was evidence of the crime. There was no doubting it. I had been imprisoned on the Wavecrest and then the sloop was sent on a voyage which Paul and his friends must have realized could end in nothing less than death.

It was an awful thought. In sudden and uncontrollable anger my cousin had attempted to stab me when we had our unfortunate quarrel aboard the sloop; but this crime was far greater than his former attempt. He had deliberately planned my death.