Part 13 (1/2)
And my father must have known her character much better than I did!
Undoubtedly it had been very hard for mother to endure the cramped circ.u.mstances of those first two years of her married life. It must have been a great deal harder for Dr. Webb to bear it, knowing that she suffered for lack of the luxuries and ease to which she had been used.
I could imagine that the situation when my grandfather died and left his peculiar will, would have pretty near maddened Dr. Webb. It would not be strange if he contemplated self-destruction as a means of putting my mother and myself positively beyond the reach of poverty. He had rowed out to White Rock. He had left the old watch--I had the heirloom in my pocket now--for the boy who was yet to grow up and bear his name. The fog and the Sally Smith had appeared together and offered him means of escape.
It would be fifteen years the coming spring that my father had disappeared. Tom Anderly had hit the time near enough. Had there been any man named Carver who had suffered such an accident off Bolderhead Neck as the old seaman told of, I would have heard the particulars, knocking about among the Bolderhead docks as I had for years.
The story seemed conclusive. I had never for a moment believed that my father had wickedly made way with himself. But that he was alive--that he had gone out into the world, possibly with the hope of finding a fortune and sometime coming back to mother and me with a pocketful of money--Yes! I could believe that, and I _did_ believe it with all my heart!
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH I HEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME THE WHALER'S BATTLE-CRY
So impressed was I by the imaginings suggested by Tom Anderly's story, that I opened my letter to old Ham Mayberry and asked him if he had ever heard of a man named Carver who had gone through the experiences Tom had related of the man who had swum to the Sally Smith from the direction of Bolderhead Neck?
It was the very next day, and a fortnight after I had boarded the whaling bark, that I got a chance to send off the letters. The wind lulled and we crossed the course of a steams.h.i.+p hailing from Baltimore and touching on the West Coast of Africa; Captain Rogers sent the letters aboard the steams.h.i.+p. There was no use in my trying to get pa.s.sage on her, however; I would have gained nothing by such a move.
”Now your letters will be picked up by a London, or Lisbon-bound steamer and it won't be two months before your folks will know all about you,”
Ben Gibson said. ”If you'd had to depend upon the post-box in the Straits of Magellan, for instance, it might be six months before Bolderhead folk would ever know what had become of you.”
I must confess that every day I was becoming more and more enamored of this life at sea. We had had little fair weather and were kept busy making sail and then reefing again, or repairing the small damages made by the gale. Captain Rogers was not the man to lay hove to in any fair breeze. We outran the bad weather before we crossed the line and then the lookout went to the masthead and from that time on, as long as I was with the Scarboro, the crowsnest was never empty by day.
For we had come into those regions of the South Atlantic where schools of the big mammals for which we hunted might be at any time come upon, especially at this season of the year. The gale having left us, the weather was charming. While winter was threatening New England we were in the lat.i.tude of perpetual summer, and as long as the trade wind blew we did not suffer from the heat.
The Scarboro carried crew enough to put out six boats at a time and still leave a boatkeeper and cook aboard. As a usual thing, however, only four boats were expected to be out at once--the captain's, Ben Gibson's (with whom Tom Anderly went as boat-steerer and would really be in charge until Ben learned the ropes) the mate's boat, and Bill Rudd, the carpenter's, boat. The gun forward in the Scarboro's bows, however, was there for a purpose, too, as I found out on the first day we sighted a whale.
The man in the crowsnest suddenly hailed the deck, when Mr. Gibson was in charge:
”On deck, sir!” he sang out, with such eagerness that the watch came instantly to attention.
”Well, sir?” cried Ben.
”Ah-h blows! Again, sir!”
”Pa.s.s the word for Cap'n Rogers, Webb,” the second mate said to me, and grabbing his gla.s.ses he started up the backstays to see the sight. Some of the hands sprang into the rigging, too, and soon the whaler's battle-cry rang through the s.h.i.+p:
”Ah-h blows! And spouts!”
Captain Rogers was on deck in a moment. He ran up after Ben Gibson and took an earnest peek through the gla.s.ses himself. Then he dropped down to the quarter and said, but with satisfaction:
”Only one fish in sight. May be more ahead. Perhaps it's a she with a calf and has got behind the school. We'll see. Now, boys! tumble up and let's get the rags on her.”
We went at the sails with a will and for the first time I saw every yard of canvas the Scarboro could set flung to the breeze. The old bark began to hustle. She was heavy and she could do no fancy sailing; but having the wind with her she rushed down upon the lone whale like a steams.h.i.+p.
Soon we could see the undulating black hump of the whale from the deck.
We saw an occasional spurt of water, or mist, from its blow-holes. By and by it breached and was out of sight for a short time. When it came up again it was still tail-end to the Scarboro and not half a mile away.