Part 9 (2/2)
”'Not as I _knows_ on,' says he, much cooler than you sit there; and that is a sailor all over. Well, she towed us about a mile, and then she was blown, and we hauled up on the line, and came up with her, and drove lances into her, till she spouted blood instead of salt water, and went into her flurry, and rolled suddenly over our way dead, and was within a foot of smas.h.i.+ng us to atoms; but if she had it would only have been an accident, for she was past malice, poor thing.
Then we took possession, planted our flagstaff in her spouting-hole, you know, and pulled back to the s.h.i.+p, and she came down and anch.o.r.ed to the whale, and then, for the first time, I saw the blubber stripped off a whale and hoisted by tackles into the s.h.i.+p's hold, which is as curious as any part of the business, but a dirtyish job, and not fit for the present company, and I dare say that is enough about whales.”
”No! no! no!”
”Well, then, shall I tell you how one old whale knocked our boat clean into the air, bottom uppermost, and how we swam round her and managed to right her?”
”And went back to the s.h.i.+p and had your tea in bed and your clothes dried?”
”No, Eve,” replied David, with the utmost simplicity; ”we got in and to work again, and killed the whale in less than half an hour, and planted our flag on her, and away after another.”
Then he told them how they harpooned one right whale, and by good luck were able to make her fast to the stern of the s.h.i.+p. ”And, if you will believe me, Miss Fountain, though there was just a breath on and off right aft, and the foresail, jib and mizzen all set to catch it, she towed the s.h.i.+p astern a good cable's length, and the last thing was she broke the harpoon shaft just below the line, and away she swam right in the wind's eye.”
”And there was an end of her and your nasty, cruel, harpoon, and--oh, I'm so pleased!”
”No, there wasn't, Eve; we heard of both fish and harpoon again, but not for a good many years.”
”Mr. Dodd!”
”Yes, Miss Fountain. It is curious, like many things that fall out at sea, but not so wonderful as her towing a s.h.i.+p of four hundred tons, with the foresail, mizzen, and jib all aback. Well, sir, did you ever hear of Nantucket? It is a port in the United States; and our harpooner happened to be there full four years after we lost this whale. Some Yankee whalers were treating him to the best of grog, and it was brag Briton, brag Yankee, according to custom whenever these two met. Well, our man had no more invention than a stone; so he was getting the worst of it till he bethought him of this whale; so he up and told how he had struck a right whale in the Pacific, and she had towed the s.h.i.+p with her sails aback, at least her foresail, mizzen, and jib, only he didn't tell it short like me, but as long as the Red Sea, with the day and the hour, the lat.i.tude (within four or five degrees, I take it), and what we had done a week before, and what we had not done, all by way of prologue, and for fear of weathering the horn--tic, tic--the point of the story too soon. When he had done there was a general howl of laughter, and they began to cap lies with him, and so they bantered him most cruelly, by all accounts; but at last a long silent chap, weather-beaten to the color of rosewood, put in his word.
”'What was the s.h.i.+p's name, mate?'
”'The _Connemara_,' says he.
”'And what is your name?' So he told him, 'Jem Green.'
”The other brings a great mutton fist down on the table, and makes all the gla.s.ses dance. 'You stay at your moorings till I come back,' says he. 'I have got something belonging to you, Jem Green,' and he sheered off. The others lay to and pa.s.sed the grog. Presently the long one comes back with a harpoon steel in his hand; there was _Connemara_ stamped on it, and also 'James Green' graved with a knife. 'Is that yours?' 'Is my hand mine?' says Jem; 'but wasn't there a broken shaft to it!”
”'There was,' says the Yankee harpooner; 'I cut it out.'
”'Well!' says Jem, 'that is the harpoon we were fast by to this very whale. Where did you kill her?'
”'In the Greenland seas.' And he whips out his private log. 'Here you are,' says he; 'March 25, 1820, lat.i.tude so and so, killed a right whale; lost half the blubber, owing to the carca.s.s sinking; cut an English harpoon out of her.'
”'Avast there, mate!' cried Jem, and he whips, out _his_ log; 'overhaul that.' The other harpooner overhauled it. 'Mates, look, here,' says he; 'I reckon we hain't fathomed the critters yet. The Britisher struck her in the Pacific on the 5th of March, and we killed her off Greenland on the 25th, five thousand miles of water by the lowest reckoning.' By this time there were a dozen heads jammed together, like bees swarming, over the two logs. 'She got a wound in the Pacific! ”Hallo!” says she; ”this is no sea for a lady to live in;” so she up helm, and right away across the pole into the Atlantic, and met her death.'”
”Your story has an interest you little suspect, young gentleman. If this is true, the northwest pa.s.sage is proved.”
”That has been proved a hundred times, sir, and in a hundred ways; the only riddle is to find it. The man that tells you there is not a northwest pa.s.sage is no sailor, and the fish that can't find it is not a whale; for there is not a young suckling no bigger than this room that does not know that pa.s.sage as well as a mid on his first voyage knows the way to the mizzen-top through lubber's hole. How tired you must be of whales, ladies?”
”Oh no.”
”Kill us one more, David. I love bloodshed--to hear of.”
”Well, now, I don't think that can be Miss Fountain's taste, to look at her.”
Then David told them how he had fallen in with a sperm whale, dead of disease, floating as high as a frigate; how, with a very light breeze, the skipper had crept down toward her; how, at half a mile distance the stench of her was severe, but, as they neared her, awful; then so intolerable that the skipper gave the crew leave to go below and close the lee ports. So there were but two men left on the brig's deck, and a s.h.i.+p's company that a hurricane would not have driven from their duty skulked before a foul smell; but such a smell! a smell that struck a chill and a loathing to the heart, and soul, and marrow-bone; a smell like the gases in a foul mine; ”it would have suffocated us in a few moments if we had been shut up along with it.” Then he told how the skipper and he stuffed their noses and ears with cotton steeped in aromatic vinegar, and their mouths with pig-tail (by which, as it subsequently appeared, Lucy understood pork or bacon in some form unknown to her narrow experience), and lighted short pipes, and breached the brig upon the putrescent monster, and grappled to it, and then the skipper jumped on it, a basket slung to his back, and a rope fast under his shoulders in case of accident, and drove his spade in behind the whale's side-fin.”
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