Swept Out to Sea Part 9

From the summit of almost every wave I stood up and gazed about me--especially ahead. Behind were only the ravenous waves seeking to overtake and swamp me. Ahead I hoped to see the vapor of some steamer, or, at least, the bare poles of a sailing vessel that could rescue me from my perilous situation.

I dreaded another night. Indeed, I did not see how I could sail the Wavecrest until morning without either food or sleep. To lash the tiller and let the sloop drive on was too reckless a course to even contemplate.

A man lost in a forest, or on a desert, may be lonely; but a voyager alone on the trackless and empty ocean is in far worse condition, believe me! Not only is he lost, but the elements themselves are continually buffeting him. In all this dreary day there was not a second in which my life was not threatened.

Finally when I knew there could not be many hours more of daylight, upon rising to the summit of a great billow, I beheld something riding the seas not far ahead. For some reason I had not seen the bulk of this strange apparition before and at first I was sure it was the turtle-turned hulk of a wreck.

But as the Wavecrest sped on, bringing me nearer and nearer to the object, I saw that I must be wrong. It was not shaped like a ship's hull although it was black and clumsy enough. But immediately about it the waves seemed to be calm. At least no waves broke and foamed about the floating ma.s.s.

I watched the thing eagerly, although I could not hope for rescue under such a guise. It was not, I was almost instantly sure, a vessel of any kind; as the Wavecrest kept on her course, which brought me directly upon the object, I was not long at a loss to identify it.

Although I had seldom been far out of sight of land myself, and had never seen any ocean creature bigger than a blackfish (not the tautog, but the pilot-whale) I had listened to the stories of old whalemen along the Bolderhead docks, and I was pretty sure that I had sighted one of those great mammals--a creature of the sea which is no more a fish than a horse or a cow is a fish, yet is the greatest wonder of marine life.

Beside, the peculiar condition of the sea immediately about the object revealed its ident.i.ty. The whale was dead, I was sure. Otherwise it would not have been at the surface so long in such a gale. And being dead, and the seabirds and shark-fish having got at its carca.s.s before the storm, there was good reason for the waves not breaking over it.

The dead whale lay in a slick, or "sleep," as some old whalemen p.r.o.nounce the word, and hope revived in my troubled mind the instant I realized what the object was, and its condition. The waves were following me as hungrily as ever; at any moment the sloop might be overwhelmed. But once let me get the Wavecrest in the lee of this dead whale, I could bid defiance to the storm. There I could outride the gale and, when it was fair again, set the sloop's nose toward the distant mainland.

With rare good fortune the sloop needed little guidance to reach the dead whale. My original course had been aimed for the huge beast. As the Wavecrest gained upon it the monster was revealed, lying partly on its side, all of fifty feet from tail to nose. Of course there were no seabirds upon the carca.s.s now, nor did I see the triangular fin of a shark anywhere about. They had ripped and torn at the carca.s.s sufficiently, however, to release copiously the oil from the casing of blubber, or fat, with which the whale is entirely covered.

My Wavecrest bore down upon the becalmed circle and suddenly I found the waves heaving smoothly under the sloop instead of breaking all about her. I ran to the canvas and stowed it quickly, then brought the sloop around into the lee of the huge bulk of the whale. I had a broken-shanked harpoon and a boathook. I plunged these both into the carca.s.s and then attached the Wavecrest, bows and stern, to these strange mooring-posts.

There she was, as safe as though we were in a landlocked harbor, rising and falling with a motion by no means unpleasant. The exuding oil made a charmed circle about the sloop, into which the agencies of the gale could not venture. The wind wailed as madly across the sea, and the sea itself, at a little distance, tumbled, and burst in a most chaotic manner; but here in the slick I lay at peace--and grateful indeed I was for this remarkable haven.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH I AM A TERRIFIED WITNESS OF A WONDERFUL PHENOMENON

Evening was dropping down and I was woefully hungry. Being sure that the Wavecrest was safely moored to the body of the dead leviathan, I set about correcting the need which preyed upon me. I was thankful, indeed, that I had stocked my larder so well on that last day at Bolderhead.

There was plenty of water, too. I could ride out a week's storm here beside the whale I was very sure, and then have plenty of provisions to serve me until I could beat back to the mainland.

I got out my lanterns, filled and trimmed them, and cutting steps in the side of the whale with the boat-hatchet, I mounted to the top of the great body and there stuck my oar upright in the blubber and hung a lantern to it. I was pretty sure that no vessel would pa.s.s that signal light without investigating, even in the gale.

I made a very comfortable supper indeed. I managed now to force the cabin door and closed the sliding hatch. Then I warmed the cabin well with the spirit stove, stripped off my wet clothes, and got into dry garments. I went out on deck at nine o'clock, saw that my moorings were fast and the lanterns burning brightly, and then turned in. After the uncertainties of the day and the lack of sleep suffered the night before, I slept as soundly when I now turned in on one of the bunks as ever I did in my own bed at home!

At daybreak--another drab dawning of the new day--I was up and climbed the whale for the lantern. In its place I left attached to the upright oar a shirt to flutter in the wind for a signal. I hoped that any vessel pa.s.sing near enough to see my signal would stop for me. But of one thing I was sure: If it chanced that a whaling ship came within sight of the dead leviathan my peril would soon be over. This huge beast had not been long dead and it would be all clear gain to any "blubber boiler" that chanced to pa.s.s that way.

Nor was the possibility of being rescued by a whaleship so slight as it would have been a few years before. There were for two decades, few whaling barks put forth from the New England ports; but of late years there is either a greater demand for whale-oil, or the cachelot (the sperm whale) is becoming more frequently seen both in northern and southern seas, and is being hunted both by steam vessels and by the old-time whaling ships.

I didn't know where I was--that is, my position in the North Atlantic; but I believed that I had sailed so far and so fast in the sloop that I was about midway of the course of the British steam lines running 'twixt Halifax and the Bermudas. Those two ports are between seven and eight hundred miles apart, and I suspected I was nearer one or the other than I was to Boston! I knew I had done some tall sailing since being swept out of Bolderhead Harbor.

After having cooked and eaten a hearty breakfast, despite the blowing of the gale--for dirty weather prevailed and rain swept down in torrents every hour or two--I set about making such slight repairs as I could with the tools and materials I had at hand. And while thus engaged I made a discovery that--to say the least--startled me.

Dragging over the bows of the Wavecrest was the cable by which she had been moored in Bolderhead Harbor. I had never chanced to draw it aboard. Now I did so. It was only a bit, some three or four feet long.

And instead of finding it frayed and broken by the strain of the sloop as she dragged at her old anchorage, I found that the hemp had been cut sharply across. Nothing less than a knife--and a sharp one--had severed that cable when it was taut!

The appearance of the bit of rope gave me such a jolt that I sat down and stared at it. I had been quite sure that Paul Downes and his friends knew I was aboard the Wavecrest when they nailed me into the cabin.

But it really never crossed my mind that they had deliberately cut the sloop adrift. But here was evidence of the crime. There was no doubting it. I had been imprisoned on the Wavecrest and then the sloop was sent on a voyage which Paul and his friends must have realized could end in nothing less than death.

It was an awful thought. In sudden and uncontrollable anger my cousin had attempted to stab me when we had our unfortunate quarrel aboard the sloop; but this crime was far greater than his former attempt. He had deliberately planned my death.

And if Ham Mayberry, or any of my other friends, took the pains to look at the Wavecrest's mooring cable, they would know that the sloop had been cut adrift. The evidence lay in both pieces of the cable.

Perhaps, however, it would not be known--it might never be suspected, indeed--that I had been swept out to sea in the sloop. The mere fact that I had left my tender tied to the mooring buoy might not be understood. Beside, the tender might have been cut adrift, too. Or the gale might have done much havoc in Bolderhead Inlet. Other craft could easily have been strewn along the rocky sh.o.r.es, or carried--like the Wavecrest--out into the open sea.

The mystery of my disappearance might never be explained--until I returned home. And when would I get back? I did not like to think of this. I worried over the effect my disappearance would have upon my mother's mind. And, while I was absent, Mr. Chester Downes would have full swing.

Worried as I was because of my situation, here in the seemingly empty Atlantic, my greatest anxiety was for my mother. More and more had I come to fear the evil machinations of Mr. Chester Downes. While I had been on hand to defend mother from her brother-in-law--and defend her from her own innocent belief in him, as well!--I was but mildly disturbed. If worse came to worse, I could always write to Lawyer Hounsditch whom I believed would never see my mother cheated.

But now--and G.o.d only knew for how long a time--it was beyond my power to do a single thing toward guarding my mother from Chester Downes. How I wish I had taken the old attorney of the Darringford Estate into my confidence before this time!

These were some of my sad thoughts following the discovery of the severed cable. I remained in a very, very low state of mind indeed during that forenoon. The gale did not abate; nothing but the boisterous sea and the overcast sky could I see about me. Not even a seabird came to the dead whale. I was alone--stark alone.

At mid-afternoon, however, I sighted something to the southward. I had climbed to the top of the whale for a better observation and against the horizon I beheld a long ribbon of smoke--just a faint streak against the lighter colored clouds. I knew that a steamer was there; but she was far, far away, and would never sight the whale, or my fluttering signal.

I thought of all manner of curious plans to attract attention to my plight from a long distance over the sea. Fire was my main thought. I knew that no vessel--scarcely a mail-carrying steamship--would pa.s.s a fire at sea without investigation. Had I been a modern Munchausen I might have found some way of drawing a wick through the whale and setting fire to its blubber!

As it was, had I been likely to run short of burning fluid I surely would have endeavored to "try out" some of the blubber. I knew that, before the day of mineral oil--kerosene--people used whale oil almost altogether for lamps. But I was fortunately well supplied with oil, water and food. I might ward off starvation for a month; but I was not at all sure that I wished to exist so long under the then prevailing conditions.

But life is very sweet to us, and I suppose I should have clung to the last shred of mine had Fate intended me to remain in this abandoned state so long. This day and another night pa.s.sed. I went to bed and slept well. The whale's carca.s.s might roll over and crush my boat, or some other accident happen to the Wavecrest during my retirement. But I could do nothing to fend off Fate did I keep awake and had already made up my mind that I had little to fear.

As for the whale sinking again, that was impossible. It may have sunk after being killed; but putrefaction had set in within the carca.s.s and the gases which had thereby formed would keep the whale afloat until the fish and seabirds had stripped its bones, in great part at least.

With the returning day the clouds broke. I had noted before arising that the gale was subsiding. The sun showed his face and I welcomed him enthusiastically. The sea did not subside however. I could not think of leaving my sure haven yet. It did not look exactly like settled weather but the sun shone warmly for part of that forenoon.

Before noon several screaming gulls had found the dead whale and were circling around it, gaining courage to attack. The presence of the sloop moored to it bothered them at first. But in a few hours there were other scavengers of the sea at hand which were afraid of nothing. I sighted the first ugly fin soon after eating my dinner. Then another, and another and another appeared, and soon the voracious sharks were tearing at the whale from beneath while the increasing number of seabirds were hovering and fighting above the carca.s.s.

Both the finned and winged denizens of the sea became so fearless that I could have stroked the sides of the sharks with my hand or got upon the whale and knocked the birds over with a club. Blood as well as oil ran from the great carca.s.s and the sea was soon streaked all around with foulness. A dreadful stench began to be apparent, too. The fetid ga.s.ses from the abdominal cavity of the dead creature were escaping.

But I could not afford to change my anchorage just for a bad smell!

Anxious as I was to get home again, I dared not start for land yet awhile. I must wait for a fair wind and the promise of a spell of steady weather. I knew that by heading into the northwest I must reach the New England coast if I sailed far enough; but otherwise I was quite ignorant of my position. Having a nicely drawn chart in my chest did not help me in the least now, for I did not know my position and had no means of learning it had I been a navigator.

This day pa.s.sed likewise and an uncertain, windy night was ushered in.

I set my lantern again on the whale's back, the birds having become less troublesome; but determined to keep watch for part of the night, at least. To this end I rolled myself in my blanket and lay down on the bench at the stern. The clouds still fled across the skies, harried by the wind; and the wind itself fluctuated, wheeling around to various points of the compa.s.s within a short hour.

I fell asleep occasionally and finally, before dawn, descended into a heavy slumber. I don't know what awoke me. The wind was whining very strangely through the sloop's standing rigging. My oar had tumbled down and oar and lantern were in the sea. The birds had all disappeared, nor were the fins of the sharks visible. Off to the south'ard was a strange, copper colored bank of cloud. The east was streaked lividly, for it was all but sunrise.

I rose and stretched, yawning loudly. I suddenly felt a p.r.i.c.kling sensation all over me. I knew that the air must be strongly impregnated with electricity. Despite the whining of the wind here beside the dead whale there seemed to have fallen a calm.

I scrambled up the side of the whale and turned to look northward.

Glory! Within five miles was a bark, under full sail, coming down upon me--a vision of rescue that brought the stinging tear-drops to my eyes.

I was saved.

I did not care for the oar and the lost lantern now. I stood there and waved the coat that I had dragged off at first sight of the vessel. I knew her company must see me. I was as positive of rescue as of anything in the world. The bark was flying before a stiff breeze, and it was head on to the whale. I could not be missed.

Although the on-coming ship sailed so proudly, however, the breeze that filled her canvas did not breathe upon my cheek. Nor was it the whining of that favoring wind I had heard since first opening my eyes. I swung about suddenly and looked to the south. Up from that direction rolled the copper colored cloud--and it seemed veritably to roll along the surface of the sea.