The Sea Bride Part 23

Noll heard and waved his hand defiantly; and at the same time, the whale saw Noll's boat and charged it.

The whale, as has been said, would be invulnerable if his wit but matched his bulk. It does not. Furthermore, the average whale will not fight at all, but runs; and it is his efforts to escape that blindly cause the damage, and even the tragedies of the fisheries. But when he does attack, he attacks almost always in the same way. The sperm whale, the cachalot, trusts to his jaw; he bites; and his enemy is not the men in the boat, but the boat itself. Perhaps he cannot see the men; his eye is small and set far back on either side of his great head.

Certainly, when once a boat is smashed, it is rare for a whale to deliberately try to destroy the men in the water. The sperm whale tries to bite; the right whale--it is from him your whalebone comes--strikes with his vast flukes. He will lie quietly in the water and brush his flukes back and forth across the surface, feeling for his enemy. If his flukes touch a floating tub, an oar, a man, they coil up like an enormous spring, and slap down with a blow that crushes utterly whatever they may strike. The whalemen have a proverb: "'Ware the sperm whale's jaw, and the right whale's flukes." And there is more truth than poetry in that.

When a sperm whale destroys a boat with his flukes, it is probably accident; but he bites with malice prepense and pernicious. The whale which Noll had struck set out to catch Noll's boat and smash it in his jaws.

His very eagerness was, for a long time, his destruction. The whale was bulky; a full hundred feet long, and accordingly unwieldy. A man on foot can, if he be sufficiently quick, dodge a bull in an open field; by the same token, a thirty-foot whaleboat, flat-bottomed, answering like magic to the very thought of the men who handle her, can dodge a hundred-barrel bull whale. Noll's boat dodged; the men used their oars at Noll's command, and Silva in the stern swung her around as on a pivot with a single sweep. The whale surged past, the water boiling away from its huge head.

Surged past, and turned to charge again.... This time, as it pa.s.sed, Noll touched the creature with his lance, but the p.r.i.c.k of it was no more than the dart in the neck of a fighting bull. It goaded the whale, and nothing more. He charged with fury; his very fury was their safety.

Noll struck the whale at a little after nine o'clock in the morning. At noon, the vast beast was still fighting, with no sign of weariness. It charged back and forth, back and forth; and the men swung the boat out of his way; and their muscles strained, their teeth ground together, the sweat poured from them with their efforts. They were intoxicated with the battle. Noll, in the bow, bellowed and shouted his defiance; the men yelled at every stroke; they shook their fists at the whale as he raged past them. And Silva, astern, s.n.a.t.c.hing them again and again from the jaws of destruction, grinned between tight lips, and plied his oar, and cried to Noll to strike.

At a little after noon, the whale swung past Noll with such momentum that he was carried out to the rim of the circle in which the fight was staged, and saw Tichel's boat there. Any boat was fair game to the monster; and Tichel had grown careless with watching the breath-taking struggle. He had forgotten his own peril; he expected the whale to turn back on Noll again....

It did not; it swung for him, and its jaws sheared through the very waist of his boat, so that the two halves fell away on either side of the vast head. The men had time to jump clear; there was no man hurt--save for the strangling of the salt water--and the whale seemed to feel himself the victor, for he lay still as though to rest upon his laurels.

Willis c.o.x was nearest; he drove his boat that way, and stood in the bow, with lance in hand to strike. But Noll, hauling up desperately on the line, bellowed to him: "Let be, Willis. He's mine." And Willis sheered off.

Then the whale felt the tug of the line, and whirled once more to the battle. Willis picked up Tichel and his men, towed the halves of the boat away, back to the ship.... The _Sally_ was standing by, a mile from the battle. Such whales as this could sink the _Sally_ herself with a battering blow in the flank. It was dangerous to come too near. Willis put Tichel and his men aboard, and went back to wait and be ready to answer any command from Noll.

The fifth hour of the battle was beginning.... The whale was tireless; and Noll, in the bow of his boat, seemed as untired as the beast he fought. But his men, even Silva, were wearying behind him. It was this weariness that presently gave the whale his chance. He charged, and Silva's thrust on the long oar was a shade too late. The boat slipped out of reach of the crashing jaws; but the driving flukes caught it and it was overturned. The gear flew out....

Noll, in the bow, clung to the gunwale for an instant as the boat was overthrown. Long enough to wrench out the pin that held the line in the boat's bow. Silva, astern, would have cut; his hatchet was ready. But Noll shouted: "No, by G.o.d! Let be...."

Then they were all in the water, tumbling in the surges thrown back by the pa.s.sage of the monster.... And the whale drove by, turned, saw no boat upon the water, thought victory was come....

Brander, at this time, was a quarter-mile away. When the boat went over, he yelled to his men: "Pull.... Oh, pull!" And they bent their stout oars with the first hot tug; fresh men, untired, hungry these hours past for a chance at the battle. Brander started toward where lay the capsized boat, the swimming men....

And Noll Wing lifted a commanding arm and beckoned him to make all speed. Brander urged his men: "Spring hard! Spring.... Hard. Now, on!"

A whaleboat is as speedy as any craft short of a racing sh.e.l.l; and Brander's men knew their work. They cut across the vision of the loafing whale; and the beast turned upon this new attacker with undiminished vigor.

Brander's eyes narrowed as he judged their distance from the drifting boat; he swerved a little to meet the coming whale head on. The whale plowed at him; they met fifty yards to one side of the spot where the boat was floating; and as they met, Brander dodged past the whale's very jaw, and slid astern of him. Before the whale could turn, he was alongside the capsized boat, dragging Noll over his own gunwale.

He dragged Noll in; and he saw then that the captain held in his hand a loop of the line that was fast to the whale. And Brander grinned with delighted appreciation. Noll straightened, brushed Brander back out of the way without regarding him, pa.s.sed the line to the men in Brander's boat. "Haul in," he roared. "Get that stowed aboard here. By G.o.d, we'll get that whale...."

They worked like mad, coiling the slack line in the waist, while Noll fitted it into the crotch and pinned it there. The whale was back at them, by then; they dodged again. And this time, as the creature swung past, Loum--Brander's boat-steerer--brought them in close against the monster's flank before dodging out to evade the smashing flukes. In that instant, Noll saw his chance, and drove home his lance to half its length.

It was the first fair wound the whale had taken; a wound not fatal, not even serious. Nevertheless, it seemed to take the fight out of the beast. He sulked for a moment, then began--for the first time in more than five hours' fighting--to run.

The line whipped out through the crotch in the bow; the men tailed on to it, and let it go as slowly as might be, while Loum swung the steering oar to keep them in the creature's track. Noll, in the bow, was like a man glorified; his cap was tugged tight about his head; he had flung away his coat, and his shirt was open half way to the waist. The spray lashed him; his wet garments clung to his great torso. His right hand held the lance, point upward, b.u.t.t in the bottom of the boat; his left rested on the line that quivered to the tugging of the whale. His knee was braced on the bow.... A heroic figure, a figure of strength magnificent, he was like a statue as the whaleboat sliced the waves; and his lips smiled, and his eyes were keen and grim. The line slipped out through the burning fingers of the men; the whale raced on.

Abruptly Noll snapped over his shoulder: "Haul in, Mr. Brander," And Brander, at Noll's back, gave the word to the men; and they began to take back the line they had given the whale in the beginning. It came in slowly, stubbornly.... But it came. They drew up on the whale that fled before them. They drew up till the smashing strokes of the flukes as the creature swam no more than cleared their bow. Drew up there, and sheered out under the thrust of Loum's long oar, and still drew on.... They were abreast of the flukes; they swung in ahead of them.... They slid, suddenly, against the whale's very side.

The end came with curious abruptness. The whale, at the touch of the boat against his side, rolled a little away from them so that his belly was half exposed. The "life" of a whale, that ma.s.s of centering blood vessels which the lance must find, lies low. Noll knew where it lay; and as the whale thus rolled, he saw his mark.... He drove the lean lance hard; drove it so hard there was no time to pull it out for a second thrust. Nor any need. It was s.n.a.t.c.hed from his hands as the whale rolled back toward them. Loum's oar swung; they loosed line and shot away at a tangent to the whale's course. And Noll cried exultantly, hands flung high: "Let me, let me, be. He's done!"

They saw, within a matter of seconds, that he was right. The whale stopped; he slowly turned; he lay quiet for an instant as though counting his hurts. The misty white of his spout was reddened by a crimson tint; it became a crimson flood. It roared out of the spout hole, driven by the monster's panting breath.... And the whale turned slowly on his side a little, began to swim.

A tiny trout, hooked through the head and thrown back into the pool, will sometimes race in desperate circles, battering helplessly against the bank, the bottom of the pool, the sunken logs.... Thus this monstrous creature now swam; a circle that centered about the boat where Noll and the others watched; that tore the water and flung it in on them. Faster and faster, till it seemed his great heart must burst with his own labors. And at the end, flung half clear of the water, threw his vast bulk forward, surged idly ahead, slowly.... Was still.

Noll cried: "Fin out, by G.o.d. He's dead...."

A big whale, as big as most whalemen ever see, the biggest Noll himself had ever slain. A fitting thing; for old Noll Wing had driven his last lance. He was tired; he showed it when Brander gave the whale to Willis for towing back to the ship, and raced for the _Sally_ with Noll panting in the bow. The fire was dying in the captain's eyes; he pulled Brander's coat about his great shoulders and huddled into it. He scarce moved when they reached the _Sally_. Brander helped him aboard. Dan'l Tobey cried: "A great fight, sir. Six hours; and two stove boats.... But you killed."

Noll wagged his old head, looked around for Faith, leaned heavily upon her arm.

"Take me down, Faith," he said. "Take me down. For I am very tired."

XIX

One-eyed Mauger sought out Brander three days later. Brander had been decent to him from the beginning; and Mauger, who had been changed from a venomous and evil thing into a cacklingly cheerful nonent.i.ty by Noll Wing's blow and kick, repaid Brander with a devotion almost inhuman. He sought out Brander three days later.... That is to say, he made occasion, during the work of scrubbing up after Noll's last whale, to come to Brander's feet; and while he toiled at the planking of the deck there, he looked up at the fourth mate and nodded significantly.

Brander understood the one-eyed man; he asked: "What's wrong, Mauger?"

His tone was friendly.

Mauger chuckled mirthlessly, deprecatingly. "Don't want you should git mad," he protested.

Brander shook his head, his eyes sobering. "Of course not. What is it?"

"There's chatter, forward," said Mauger. "They're talking dirt."

Brander's voice fell. "Who?"

"Slatter was th' first. Others now. Dirt."

Brander looked about the deck; there was no one within hearing. He asked quietly: "What kind of dirt?"

Mauger looked up and grinned unhappily and apologetically. "You know,"

he said. "You and--her...."

Brander's eyes hardened; he said, under his breath: "Thanks, Mauger."

And he walked away from where the one-eyed man was scrubbing. Mauger rose on his knees to look after the fourth mate with something like worship in his eyes.

Brander went aft with his problem. A real problem. Faith besmirched....

He would have cut off his right hand to prevent it; but cutting off his right hand would have done no good whatever. He would have fought the whole crew of the _Sally_, single-handed; but that would have done even less good than the other. You cannot permanently gag a man by jamming your fist in his mouth. And Brander knew it; so that while he boiled with anger and disgust, he held himself in check, and tried to consider what should be done....

Must do something.... No easy task to determine what that something was to be.

Brander considered the members of the crew; the fo'm'st hands. Slatter he knew; an evil man. Others there were like him, either from weakness or sheer malignant festering of the soul. But there were some who were men, some who were decent.... Some who would fight the foul talk, wisely or unwisely as the case might be; some who had eyes to see the goodness of Faith, and hearts to trust her....

Brander's task was to help these men. He could not himself go into the fo'c's'le and strike; to do so would only spread the filth of words abroad. But--one thing he could do. He saw the way....

Avoid Faith.... That would not be easy, since their lives must lie in the cabin. Avoid Faith, avoid speaking to her save in the most casual way, avoid being alone with her. That much he must do; and something more. The crew would be spying on them now, watching, whispering. He must give them no food for whispers; he must go further. He must give them proof that their whispers were ill-founded. He must....