Our officers were all highly indignant at the conduct of the Battles, which was contrary to all the ethics of whaling, if not to the law of the high seas. I overheard Captain Nelson talking with Mr. Baker, who got very vehement about it, and wanted to take Starbuck’s whale away from them by force.

Captain Nelson was quiet for a moment, stroking his beard, which had got pretty ragged.

“Some excuse, perhaps,” he said at last. “Kind of a row with Fred three or four weeks before we sailed. My house. Maybe I was a little trifle hasty, but so was he. Both got mad, and I said more than I meant to. Never thought he’d—well, I ’ll go aboard of him in the morning, and see if I can’t fix it up.”

So Lizzie Nelson was at the bottom of it all! At our house we always spoke of her as “that Nelson girl,” a rather pretty girl in a buxom, loud, Nelsonish sort of way; “pleasant-spoken” the best that people said of her, and the worst much worse than that. I had the feeling that I was warned against the wiles of Lizzie Nelson, although my mother never actually said anything against her. You would think it unnecessary to warn a boy of fifteen against the wiles of a girl of twenty, but you did not know Lizzie Nelson, and my mother did. However, I did not fancy her, nor any of her stripe. Ann McKim was the idol of my boyhood, as she was the idol of my youth. I had no room for fancy for the Lizzie Nelsons of the world, but there were plenty of those who had.

We were not to know the results of Captain Nelson’s visit, for he did not make it. The Annie Battles had finished cutting-in during the night, and at dawn her topsails were just dropping over the horizon to the eastward. We followed. There was no chance of our catching her, of course, unless she hove to to try out, and we could creep up on her unbeknownst, like ’Zekiel. We soon lost her; and although we kept on to the eastward for a couple of days, Captain Nelson was not yet ready to leave those cruising grounds. He would not be ready for that, with average luck, for weeks, and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, with the additional disadvantage that, even if we found the needle, it would slip away at the first sight of us. At the end of the second day we came about, and worked back across the grounds.

While making a passage from one cruising ground to another the distribution of duties is much the same as on a merchant vessel. When whaling grounds have been reached, however, all this is changed. Each boat’s crew constitutes a watch, and the night, from four bells to four bells—from six in the evening to six in the morning—is divided among them. The officer of the watch is the boatheader, or mate. A watch, for a four-boat ship, is thus three hours long, and for a five-boat ship, such as ours, two hours and forty minutes. This easing up on the men is in order that they may be as fresh as possible for the chase and taking of whales, which is their first and most important business. For the same reason the crew has only the most necessary duties during the day; and except for the necessary change of sails morning and night, and washing down and scrubbing the decks each morning, the day is passed in utter idleness, so far as regular ship’s duties are concerned. The men are allowed to do what they please: read—if they can read—play cards, mend clothes, scrimshaw, sleep.

During the day the ship stands along under easy sail so that nothing will be missed, usually going to windward slowly, tacking or beating; picking up whales if they are seen and can be got. At sunset light sails are taken in, topsails close-reefed, and every­thing done to insure the ship’s making as little progress as possible during the night. They even wear ship occasionally, to keep in the same place throughout the night. At six in the morning—four bells—or perhaps earlier if they are in the more temperate latitudes, the crew is called up, sail restored, decks washed and scrubbed, and she is off again on her beating to windward. It made me think of the terns fishing off Ricketson’s Point in Padanaram: tacking slowly, beating to windward, the eyes above the coral-red bill, like a man at the masthead, keeping a bright lookout for fish; then coming down swiftly with the wind to the leeward side of their cruising ground to begin once more their slow beating against the wind. In just this way, when the ship has reached the windward edge of her cruising ground, she wears around, and comes down before it, to repeat the process until the old man has tired of it.

We had been doing this for three weeks, since the Annie Battles parted from us, without taking any whales. We had seen but two spouts, and lowered once without result. The other spout was sighted about sunset, and we did not lower. I was standing, one morning, by the rail, as I was always doing when I had a chance, and Macy was walking the deck behind me. As he was passing I turned to him.

“No sign of the Battles,” I said. I had been thinking of her, and my remark was only the continuation of my thought.

“No sign of the Battles,” he said cheerfully, stopping by me for a moment. “I’m glad of it. I thought we should surely see her again before this, but we have n’t, and good riddance, I say.”

He began his pacing the deck again, and I strolled forward. I found Peter sitting beside the windlass, working on his model. I never knew Peter to be asleep. He did not seem to need sleep. I told him what Macy had said.

“Aye, Tim,” he said, “and I hope so too. The sea’s a big place, but it’s a little place, too, and you’re always running across some vessel you don’t want to see, ’specially when she’s on the same business as yourself. One voyage I made to eastern ports, Canton, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila, and the like, I was always meeting Tim Fernand, who’d been my shipmate in the navy. He’d shipped on the Mary Easton, and she followed us around from port to port, or beat us to it. I was hard put to it to get rid of him, for he’d fasten on me like a leech, and he was a robber.”

“Like the Annie Battles.”

Peter looked up at me with a smile in his eyes, but said nothing, and then there came down to us from the masthead the familiar, quavering cry. Peter sighed, put down his model, and got up. It was a single spout—from a lone whale, so far as he could judge—miles off to the southeast. Peter turned back to me.

“Speak of the devil,” he said. “Do you see, Tim? Just there, well beyond the whale? What do you make of it?”

I was a long time in seeing anything, but at last I made out dimly the two slender topmasts with their yards, but no sails.

“Cutting-in, like as not,” said Peter. “If she was trying-out you’d see the smoke.”

We headed up toward the whale, and when we were near enough, Mr. Wallet and Mr. Brown lowered. The whale led them a leisurely chase directly toward the Battles, and we followed. Mr. Brown got fast, but Mr. Wallet did not. He sailed on after the whale, which was running away with Mr. Brown. The whale was going much faster than Mr. Wallet’s boat was, and it was a losing chase from the moment Mr. Brown struck. We wondered, and snickered, for it was so like Wallet. As Peter said, it was like a drunken man chasing his hat, always hoping it would stop, and always keeping after it with the one fixed idea. But Peter was wrong about the idea. If Mr. Wallet had a fixed idea it was not what Peter—and all of us who watched—thought it was, for he sailed straight up to the side of the Battles. Although we had got within three miles of her, I could not see clearly what was happening then, but Peter could. His eyes were better than mine, in spite of his age.

“Now, what do you make of that?” he cried. “They’re holding her there, and the Battles’ crew ain’t making any sort of objection that I c’n see. It’s a queer vessel and a queer crew and queer doings, and Cap’n Coffin’s the queerest of the lot, if you believe what they say of him—which I don’t. There goes Mr. Wallet over the side, and that’s queerer yet. Mebbe he thinks he can clear up the queerness, but I miss my guess if that’s what he thinks. If it was the old man himself, now, or Mr. Baker, say, or Mr. Brown, I’d say it would be cleared up, but ’tween you and me, I doubt Mr. Wallet can if he tries, and I doubt he tries.”

“What do you suppose, Peter,” I asked, “he means to—”

“I ain’t had time to s’pose anything, Tim,” said Peter. “There’s George Hall, now, wanting to go aboard, and they won’t let him. Tell him to cast off and keep off. I c’n almost hear ’em say it. Quite a crowd of ’em along by the gangway, and all motioning him off. They were cutting-in, as I thought, and they’ve let the carcass go adrift. You can see it, I guess, going astern, just awash. Now some of ’em take spades, and jab at the boathook, and they’re getting sail on her.”

Peter’s bulletins stopped, and we just stood there, gazing in silence.

“That Wallet,” he said at last, “ ’s got more sense than I gave him credit for. You see, Tim, if it’s desertion, which is more ’n likely, and if we ever get hold of him again, he ’ll say that he was kidnapped by that crew of pickpockets. It’d be hard to prove ’t he was n’t, and it would n’t make much difference whether anybody believed it or not. If we don’t get him—and I should think that the old man ’d be glad to be rid of him—we ’ll never know the rights of it, or what ’ll be done about his lay in our take so far. I don’t know what course the—Aye, aye, sir.”

For Mr. Baker’s boat was called away, and Peter ran. Captain Nelson himself took the boat, and the men pulled hard for the Battles; but her mainsail was already up, and they got the foresail up and broke out a jib, and she stood off on the wind before the boat had gone half a mile. It was hopeless to chase her, and Captain Nelson came back. He was very sober and stern as he came over the side, and we watched the square topsails of the Battles gradually sinking to the eastward, while we got ready to receive Mr. Brown and his whale.

As soon as the cutting-in and trying-out was finished we made sail, and headed for Montevideo. It was within a couple of days of Christmas, and the men hoped for some liberty ashore. Captain Nelson was governed by other reasons in making for port; he wanted to send letters, as it turned out, chiefly on account of the mysterious behavior of the Battles, and the desertion of Wallet, I suppose, although I never knew definitely. He let it be known that any letters would be sent, and I wrote home, but by a piece of carelessness of my own, my letter did not go.

We did not get into Montevideo by Christmas, as we had been more than three hundred miles from the coast; and we had to be content with the usual ship’s fare on that day, with the addition of plum duff and a serving of rum. I did not take the rum, of course, but I took the duff, which tasted good enough, although it was nothing more than soggy dumpling, with molasses over it. I could not help thinking of my mother’s dumplings—food of a different species—and of the turkey and cranberry sauce, and the pumpkin and apple pies, and the apples and nuts and raisins to which my family were sitting down on that day. No doubt they were thinking of me.

At Montevideo, which we reached in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the captain sent his letters and tried to ship another man. This he was unable to do, and he had to sail without him, a man short. The men were disappointed in their hoped-for liberty, only one boat’s crew getting two hours’ liberty. This crew was chosen with some care, as the men must be those who could be relied upon to return at the end of their two hours. We sailed at sunset, with some grumbling on the part of the men.

Nothing was done about the second mate’s berth for more than a week, and I did not happen to hear him mentioned, although I have an idea that the captain talked the matter over with Mr. Baker. At last, however, he acted, having concluded, as I supposed, that there was little chance of getting Mr. Wallet back. There was some show of letting the men choose, but it amounted to nothing. Macy was made fifth mate, and the other mates moved up a peg, so that Mr. Brown was second mate. That pleased me, and the appointment of Macy pleased Peter, for he said that there was not a better man on the ship. I agreed with him in that. Macy was one of the finest specimens of man I have ever seen. He was over six feet tall, with a perfectly proportioned figure, but his perfect proportions did not give an adequate idea of his size unless he stood beside another man. He had rather tightly curling flaxen hair—we called him “Towhead”—and deep blue eyes, and a smile that won the heart of every one on whom it shone. I felt that I should like to know him well, but it was not easy to know him well. There was about him a certain atmosphere of aloofness. No doubt this was due largely to a natural shyness; but, knowing less about such things then than I do now, I ascribed it to a feeling of superiority on his part. That was his reputation on the ship, a reputation which he did not deserve. He was a silent giant, not given to useless motions, but you felt his power and his alertness. It used to give me great pleasure merely to look at Macy.

Unfortunately, we were now one man short, and the vacancy was in Mr. Brown’s boat, for Starbuck had been moved into Macy’s place in Mr. Baker’s boat, again over the head of the man to whom the promotion would naturally fall. This was Ezra Winslow, a good-natured young fellow, but rather stupid, and not nearly as good a man as the Prince. There were few men in the whole crew who were anywhere near as good as the Prince, and there was another boatsteerer needed, and he was it. I do not know whether it was the usual practice, in cases of the promotion of mates, for the mates who were moved up to keep the boats and crews they had had before, but they did in this case. The Prince was therefore Mr. Brown’s boatsteerer. The vacancy in his boat was not filled for some time, but it worked out very well for me.