Part 1 (2/2)
any chances you don't have to,” was the gruff comment, ”an' if you'll take the advice of an old hand at the game you'll keep away.”
”But I want to go so much, Hank,” came the reply.
”What for?”
”I'm trying to get Father's permission to join the Bureau of Fisheries,”
explained the boy, ”and when Captain Murchison started on this trip, I begged him to let me come. The captain is an old friend of his.”
”I'd rather you went in somebody else's boat than mine, then,” was the ungracious response.
”Why, Hank!” exclaimed Colin in surprise, ”what a thing to say!”
The old sailor nodded sagely.
”The skipper don't know much more about boat-whalin' than you do,” he said, ”that was all done away before his time. He's willin' to tackle anythin' that comes along, all right, but a whalin' boat is just about the riskiest thing that floats on water.”
”How's that, Hank?” asked the boy. ”I always thought they were supposed to be so seaworthy.”
”They may be seaworthy,” was the grim reply, ”but I never yet saw a s.h.i.+pwright who'd guarantee to make a boat that'd be whaleworthy.”
”But I'm sure I've read somewhere that whales never attacked boats,”
persisted Colin.
”Mebbe,” rejoined the gunner, ”but I don't believe that any man what writes about whalin' bein' easy, has ever tried it in a small boat.”
”Well,” said the boy, ”isn't it true that the only time a whale-boat is smashed up is when the monster threshes around in the death-flurry and happens to hit the boat with his tail?”
”Not always.”
”You mean a whale does sometimes go for a boat, in spite of what the books say?”
”I never heard that whales cared much about literatoor,” the sailor answered with an attempt at rough humor, ”an' anyway, most o' them books you've been readin', lad, are written about whalin' off Greenland an' in the Atlantic.”
”What difference does that make?” queried Colin. ”Isn't a whale the same sort of animal all the world over?”
”There's all kinds of whales,” the gunner said, as though pitying the boy for his lack of knowledge, ”some big an' some little, some good an'
some bad. Now, a 'right' whale, f'r instance, couldn't harm a baby, but the killers are just pure vicious.”
”You mean the orcas?” the boy queried. ”Only just the other day Captain Murchison was talking about them. He called them the wolves of the sea, and said they were the most daring hunters among all things that swim.”
”Sea-tigers, some calls 'em,” the other agreed, ”an' they're fiercer than any wolves I've ever heard about, but I never saw any of 'em attackin' a boat. I have seen as many as twenty tearin' savagely at a whale that was lyin' alongside a s.h.i.+p an' was bein' cut up by the crew.
The California gray whale--the devil-whale is what he really is--looks a lot worse to me than a killer. He's as ugly-tempered as a spearfish, as vicious as a man-eatin' shark, as tricky as a moray, an' about as relentless as a closin' ice-floe.”
”There she blo-o-ows!” came the cry again from the crow's-nest.
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