Harper's Round Table, May 7, 1895 Part 7

A REVENGEFUL WHALE.

BY W. J. HENDERSON.

The ship was under a cloud of canvas. Old Handsome lay on his side away forward near the knight-heads, where the rhythmic rise and fall of the bows lulled him like the rocking of a cradle.

"Say," he drawled, in a lazy voice, "the old ship looks very gay in the sunset, doesn't she?"

"Waal," said Farmer Joe, "she dew look right peert. But all the same I don't see no use o' wastin' a whole dog-watch a-lookin' at her."

"Who arst yer to?" said another sailor.

"Waal," continued Farmer Joe, "what I'm a-thinkin' of is that Handsome ort to tell us some more o' his whalin' exper'ences."

Handsome uttered a feeble moan of protest. But the seamen gathered around him and persisted.

"Well, well," he said at length, "hold on a minute till I overhaul my recollection-lockers. Let's see; where was I? Oh yes; I'd got to where I was lost from the _Ellen Burgee_, and was picked up by the whaler _Two Cousins_. Well, that was a rum sort of a go. You see the Captain of the _Two Cousins_ was very glad to get us, because he was short-handed, some of his men having deserted at the last port. So we agreed to work in with his crew until our own ship was sighted, when he was to put us aboard of her. Of course we never had any sort of a notion that it was going to be six months before we got back to the _Ellen Burgee_. Say, of all the wearing, tearing things that can come to a man in this world there's nothing more exasperating than waiting for whales. We pretty nearly went crazy aboard the _Two Cousins_, for it was two weeks before the masthead let go the mighty welcome yell,

"'There she breaches!'

"The skipper he jumped into the rigging and took a squint, and the next minute he shouted:

"'There she blows--one--two--three! Three good whales. Lower away lively, you shipkeepers!'

"Our crew had been put in one boat, because the Captain agreed that we'd do better working together, and of course he knew we wouldn't run away, because there wasn't any place to run to. Well, we lowered away and off we went under oars, because the whales were dead to windward, and not so very far away either. We had gone about half the distance, when the boat-steerer said,

"'There goes flukes.'

"Which meant, of course, that the whales had sounded. There was nothing to do except to wait for them to come up again. They staid down a pretty long time, which proved that they were big ones, and then they came up half a mile dead to leeward of us. We set our little boat sail, there was a fairly good breeze, and we went dancing over the waves toward the whales at a good pace. The first mate of the _Two Cousins_ had the weather-gage of us, and he had the smallest whale. The one we were heading for was a regular old leviathan.

"'Get in your sail,' whispered the boat-steerer.

"It was done with great caution.

"'Now a good stroke, starboard, to pull her round.'

"We were now in a position to go up to his whaleship without being seen; so the boat-steerer says:

"'Now, lads, give way with a will. Jump her; jump her!'

"We dashed our oars, and the boat sprang forward.

"'Now!'

"The iron was thrown with a whiz, and as quick as a flash--yes, as quick as a mouse could dart into his hole--the whale went down into the sea.

The line ran out of the tub fast enough to make you dizzy. All of a sudden--how, I never could tell--there was a kink in the line, and it fouled for a second in the bow chock. Such a thing meant destruction to the boat, and as quick as thought I, being bowman, grabbed the axe and cut the line.

"'Blast you!' yelled the boat-steerer; 'what did you do that for?'

"'Do you want to be towed under?' I said. 'I should think we'd had enough towing.'

"'Well,' says he, cooling down a bit, 'there's a fine whale gone off with a good iron in him.'

"The other boats did not have much better luck than we did, seeing that their whales got frightened and began to run. They chased the brutes for two hours, and couldn't get anywhere near them. Then it commenced to get late, and the ship hoisted the waif--"

"What's that?" asked Farmer Joe.

"That's the boat recall in a whaler," answered Handsome; "and when it went up we had to go back to the ship, where we were jawed by the Captain, and made fun of by the rest of the crew. Still, we didn't mind that so very much, because, you know, it's pretty likely to be turn about in a whaler, and you can't ever tell when an accident is going to happen to the oldest hand. It was three days before we saw a whale again. I was on lookout, and I caught sight of a spurt of spray away down to leeward. I was hardly sure of it at first, but the next second the whale rose on a sea, and I caught the flash of the sun on his shiny wet back. So I bawled away as usual,

"'There blows!'

"'Only one?' yelled the Captain.

"'That's all, sir,' says I.

"'Well,' says he,' we'll make sure of him, anyhow.'

"So he gives orders to lower away three boats. These boats were to spread out in running down on the whale, so that if he sounded he might come up so near one of the outside ones as to give it a chance to go on before he could recover from his surprise. Well, we had the outside berth on the port side, and the mate of the _Two Cousins_ he had the middle. The orders were to keep abreast in sailing down, and by easing and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g sheets, according as we went ahead or not, we managed to do it pretty neatly. We had got down within two hundred and fifty yards of the whale, when he began to swim ahead. He didn't seem to go very fast, but he managed to keep us all about the same distance astern of him. All of a sudden our boat-steerer says,

"'I know him!'

"'Get out!' says I; 'how can you know a whale?'

"'But I tell you I do,' says he, 'and if you had any sense you'd know him too.'

"'How would I?' asks I.

"'Don't you see the harpoon sticking out of him?'

"I looked pretty hard, and, sure enough, there was a harpoon, with a line drifting from it.

"'That's my iron!' says the boat-steerer.

"'Get out!' says I.

"'I won't,' says he.

"'How do you know it's yours?' says I.

"'Because I made it myself, and I know my own work even when I see it afloat on a whale's back away off in longitude and lat.i.tude something or other.'

"'Then it's the same whale!' says I.

"'Right!' says he. 'It's the whale I struck the other day, and which got away because you went out and cut the line.'

"'It would be a pretty good joke on the whale,' says I, 'if we could get close enough to him to catch hold of the end of the line.'

"'It would,' says he,' and we could begin again where we left off yesterday.'