Part 14 (1/2)

In handling a small whale, Tom told me, they would thus rip the blubber off in long strips, rolling the carca.s.s over and over in the bights of the holding chains. For this one whale Captain Rogers did not see fit to start the fire under the donkey-engine amid s.h.i.+ps, by which the blubber could have been raised inboard much easier.

The try-out caldrons were heated, however, and the blubber as it came inboard--like ”sides” from a great hog--was hacked into pieces of two or three pounds each and thrown into the pots. Soon the deck of the bark, from bow to stern, was slippery with spilled oil, or bits of blubber. A thick, greasy smoke rolled away from the s.h.i.+p. It's flavor in the mouth was at first sickening. We got used to it.

”Hi, lad!” cried Tom Anderly, when I looked over the rail, ”now you've got a taste of real whaler's souse--everything you put in your potato-trap for the rest of the v'y'ge will be flavored with whale-oil.”

A whale will weigh about as many tons as it is feet long--in other words, this seventy-three foot whale weighed probably seventy ton and from the blubber we tried out thirty tons of oil--nearly half its weight in the tanks beside the baleen!

We had been sailing in the wake of the big school of whales we had spied when we killed the baleener. We came up with them again at mid-afternoon, and found that they were sperms. That was why the _Mysticete_ we had killed the day before did not start to drag the Scarboro toward the school. The baleeners and the _Denticete_ (toothed whales) do not mix in company, and are, indeed, seldom found in the same seas. The baleeners are usually found toward the Arctic or Antarctic regions, while the sperms and their ilk hold to the warm seas.

Captain Rogers might have run down to the school of cachelots and gunned for one of the beasts; but then the others would have been frightened away. The bark lay to upon a perfectly calm sea, and at a distance of about two miles from the school, and four boats were manned and shot away from the s.h.i.+p. The whales seemed to be asleep, or lying sunning themselves, upon the surface of the sea.

I was in Ben Gibson's boat, of which old Tom was steersman. He would handle the iron too, for as I have said, Ben was just as green in the actual practice of whalemans.h.i.+p as I was myself. We raced with the other boats for the nearest prize, which proved to be a husky bull, longer than the baleener we had killed.

I was bow oar, and I found that I could hold my own with the rest of the crew. Our stroke set a slapping pace and we bent to the work as though we were racing for the sport of it. Each crew desired to be first and have the credit of fles.h.i.+ng the iron in this monster. The water being so calm it proved to be a very pretty struggle. And all done so silently!

The whale is sharp-eared and on a mill-pond sea like this, sounds carry far. We came up from behind the mammoth, and we were ahead of the other boats.

The captain, in the nearest boat, signaled us with his hand to strike on, while his boat rushed past for another of the sleeping monsters. Old Tom and the young second mate changed places swiftly and the old harpooner stood up poising the heavy iron and looking to see that the coils of the rope were free. With a nod Mr. Gibson ordered the oars brought inboard and he pulled in the long steering oar himself. The whaleboat shot close up to the whale's side. The body loomed beside us like the rolling hull of an unballasted s.h.i.+p.

With my face over my shoulder I watched old Tom poise the iron. When he swung it back the muscles of his shoulder and upper arm flexed like a pugilist's! He was a fit subject for a statue at that instant. Then he flung body and weapon forward, the latter left his hand smoothly, and the sabre-sharp point sunk deep in the yielding blubber.

”Back all!” gasped Ben Gibson, scarcely above his breath, so excited was he.

But we had expected the order and were ready for it. The oars went in with unanimity and the boat shot back, for a whaleboat is as sharp at one end as it is at the other.

The whale made no flurry, however. It was as though he lay stunned for half a minute--perhaps longer. Then he made up his mind what to do, and he did it with a promptness and speed that was amazing.

Like a spurred horse the whale started ahead. I declare, it seemed as though half his length came out of the sea at the first jump. The line whizzed over the bow as though it were tackled to a fast express.

”Pull!” yelled Ben and we laid to the oars so that when the line ran out the shock would not be so great. When the first line was all out and Tom bent on another we were rus.h.i.+ng through the water like mad. We pa.s.sed the captain's boat just after he had struck on himself and his kill had sounded.

”Go it, young man!” yelled Captain Rogers, standing up and waving his hat to his nephew, ”you're going out of town faster than you'll come back.”

All we could do in that double-ended boat was to sit still and hold tight. I candidly believe that we traveled at a speed of a mile minute.

I had once been aboard of a turbine launch, and the black water was thrown up on either side of that whaleboat in a wave just as it had flowed away from the nose of the launch!

This wave seemed to be three feet higher than the gunwale of the boat and as black as ebony. Even Tom Anderly cast a glance at the boat-hatchet as though he contemplated cutting the taut line. Our eyes were blinded by the wind which seemed to be blowing a hurricane.

Actually there was scarcely a breath stirring over the surface of the placid ocean.

Our locomotive went directly through the school. Its mates rolled placidly and eyed us as we shot by with wicked glance. But none of them followed the boat which continued to tear through the water with undiminished speed.

But after a time we found that we had company, and mighty unpleasant company, too. In the boiling wake of the whaleboat I could see a dozen triangular fins--the fins of the real tiger shark of the tropics. Not a nice spectacle to men in such a situation as ours. Secretly I was frightened, and I reckon even the oldest in the boat's crew felt serious.

The mad whale was taking us farther and farther away from the bark and our friends. Indeed, the Scarboro was wiped out of sight, it seemed, within a very few minutes, and the other three boats were lost behind us, too.

The runaway, however, did not continue straight ahead. Its speed did not seem to slacken in the least; but soon it began to circle around, finding itself without its mates.

”If the old feller don't put on brakes pretty soon the harpoon'll git so hot it'll melt the blubber and pull out,” chuckled the stroke-oar.