THE STRANDED WHALE

Our fourth and last whale gave us quite a bit of trouble. We sighted this fellow spouting in a choppy sea among ice islands two or three miles off the edges of the polar pack. All three boats lowered for it. It was traveling slowly in the same direction the brig was sailing and about two miles from the vessel. It took the boats some time to work to close quarters. When the mate's boat was almost within striking distance, the whale went under. As frightened whales usually run against the wind, Mr. Winchester steered to windward. But the whale had not been frightened; it had not seen the boats. Consequently it failed to head into the wind, but did the unexpected by coming up to leeward, blowing with evident unconcern. This brought it nearest to Gabriel, who went after it in a flash. After a sharp, swift run down the wind, we struck the whale, which dived and went racing under water for the ice pack. The dizzy rate at which it took out our line might have led us to believe it was not hurt, but we knew it was seriously wounded by the fountains of blood it sent up whenever it came to the surface.

The captain's signals from the brig, by this time, had headed the other boats in our direction, but they could not reach us in time to be of any assistance. The whale ran away with our tub of line and we sat still and watched the red fountains that marked its course as it headed for the big ice to the north.

Directly in the whale's course lay an ice floe about half a mile long, a few hundred yards wide and rising from five to ten feet above the surface. We naturally supposed the creature would dive under this and keep going for the main pack. To our surprise we soon saw fountain after fountain, red with blood, shooting up from the center of the floe. The whale evidently was too badly injured to continue its flight and had sought refuge beneath this strip of drifting ice.

Men were hurriedly landed from all the boats with harpoons and shoulder guns, leaving enough sailors on the thwarts to fend the boats clear of the ice. The landing parties clambered over the broken and tumbled ice, dragging the harpoon lines. We found the whale half exposed in a narrow opening in the center of the floe, all the ice about it red with clotted blood. Long John and Little Johnny threw two harpoons each into the big body and Big Foot Louis threw his remaining one. As a result of this bombardment, five tonite bombs exploded in the whale, which, with the harpoons sticking all over its back, suggested a baited bull in a Spanish bullring hung with the darts of the banderilleros. But the great animal kept on breathing blood and would not die. After all the harpoons had been exhausted, shoulder guns were brought into play. In all, twelve tonite bombs were fired into it before the monster gave a mighty shiver and lay still.

But with the whale dead, we still had a big problem on our hands. In some way the giant bulk had to be hauled out of the ice. This was a difficult matter even with plenty of time in which to do it. Night was coming on and it was the brig's custom in the hours of darkness to sail far away from the great ice pack with its edging of floating bergs and floes in order to avoid possible accident and to sail back to the whaling grounds on the morrow. This Captain Shorey prepared to do now. As a solution of the dilemma, an empty bread cask or hogshead was brought on deck and the name of the brig was seared in its staves with a hot iron in several places. This cask was towed to the floe, hauled up on the edge of the ice, and the long line of one of the harpoons sticking in the whale was made fast to it by means of staples. Thus the cask marked the floe in which the whale was lying.

It was growing dark when the brig went about, said good-night to the whale, and headed for open water to the south. We sailed away before a stiff breeze and soon cask and floe and the great white continent beyond had faded from view. When morning broke we were bowling along under light sail in a choppy sea with nothing but water to be seen in any direction. The great ice cap was somewhere out of sight over the world's northern rim. Not a floe, a berg, or the smallest white chunk of ice floated anywhere in the purple sphere of sea ringed by the wide horizon. Being a green hand, I said to myself, "Good-bye, Mr. Whale, we certainly have seen the last we'll ever see of you."

Let me make the situation perfectly clear. Our whale was drifting somewhere about the Arctic Ocean embedded in an ice floe scarcely to be distinguished from a thousand other floes except by a cask upon its margin which at a distance of a few miles would hardly be visible through strong marine glasses. The floe, remember, was not a stationary object whose longitude and latitude could be reckoned certainly, but was being tossed about by the sea and driven by the winds and ocean currents. The brig, on the other hand, had been sailing on the wind without a set course. It had been tacking and wearing from time to time. It, too, had felt the compulsion of the waves and currents. So throughout the night the brig had sailed at random and twenty miles or so away the whale in its floe had been drifting at random. Now how were we going to find our whale again? This struck me that morning on the open sea with neither whale nor ice in sight, as a problem certainly very nice, if not hopeless. The way it was solved was as pretty a feat of navigation as I ever saw.

When Captain Shorey came on deck after breakfast, he "shot the sun" through his sextant and went below to make his calculations. In a little while he came on deck again and stepped to the man at the wheel. The helmsman was steering full and by.

"How do you head?" asked Captain Shorey.

"Northwest," answered the sailor.

"Keep her northwest by west half west," said the captain.

For several hours the brig sailed steadily on this course. Along about 9 o'clock, we saw the peculiar, cold, light look above the sky line ahead which meant ice and which sailors call an "ice horizon," to be distinguished at a glance from a water horizon, which is dark. A little later, we sighted the white loom of the great ice continent. Later still, we picked up the bergs, floes, islands, and chunks of ice which drift forever along its edge.

The brig kept on its course. A floe of ice, looking at a distance like a long, narrow ribbon, lay ahead of us, apparently directly across our path. As we drew nearer, we began to make out dimly a certain dark speck upon the edge of the ice. This speck gradually assumed definiteness. It was our cask and we were headed straight for it. To a landlubber unacquainted with the mysteries of navigation, this incident may seem almost unbelievable, but upon my honest word, it is true to the last detail.

After the brig had been laid aback near the ice, a boat was lowered and a hole was cut in the bow of the whale's head. A cable was passed through this and the other end was made fast aboard the ship. Then under light sail, the brig set about the work of pulling the whale out of the ice. The light breeze fell away and the three boats were strung out ahead with hawsers and lent assistance with the oars. It was slow work. But when the breeze freshened, the ice began gradually to give, then to open up, and finally the whale was hauled clear and drawn alongside for the cutting in.