There was no unfavorable change in the weather, and we cruised for three weeks without getting a whale, or even raising a spout. One morning, however, after a rather thick haze had cleared away somewhat, we found ourselves within half a mile of a pod of six or seven, which were lying on the surface, spouting lazily. They did not seem to be feeding, and I remember that I had heard a distant splash while it was still too thick to see them, and Peter, to whom I had turned inquiringly, had said that it was likely a whale breaching. Almost everybody on board had heard it, and the lookouts were doubled. They fully expected to sight whales, and they did sight them from the masthead before we could see them from the deck. No cry was given, but the men came down and reported.

There was hardly a breath of wind, and sound would carry easily in that weather. Indeed, it was uncanny. There seemed to be streaks or columns in the air which reflected the sound in the strangest ways, or acted like a lens for sound, at one moment utterly cutting off sounds that originated but a short distance away, and at the next moment sending to us clearly faint noises made by the pod of whales at a half-mile distance. Boats were lowered with the utmost care not to make a noise, even being put into the water one end first, to avoid any splash. The men were cautioned not to talk, and they sat silent in their boats, cast off the falls quietly, and took to their paddles as soon as the boats were in the water. It was of no use, however. The whales were keeping tabs on us, and went down quietly when a boat was within quarter of a mile of them, coming up half a mile away. It was exasperating. There were whales almost at the side, more than we had taken in six months, and we could not get near them; and after trying for hours, the boats were called back to the ship.

I do not remember that I felt any dis­ap­point­ment, however. To tell the truth, I was rather hoping for a pampero. It is not a fish, but a wind. I had some vague recollection of the brief description in Warren’s Physical Geography as a cold southwest wind which originates in the Andes, and sweeps with great violence over the pampas of Buenos Ayres, and is felt for some leagues at sea. My only comment on this description is that I don’t believe it for a minute. We were cruising just south of the latitude of Buenos Ayres, three or four hundred miles from the coast. No wind whose origin is purely local, in mountains even as high as the Andes, is at all likely to be of the violence of the sample we had, after traversing the width of a continent—narrow as it is at this latitude—and four hundred miles of ocean. They must be fed from the pampas, be supplied with energy, at least; and it seems much more reasonable to me to believe that these winds originate over the pampas. They are of the nature of a thunder-squall, and very probably of similar origin. But Warren can hardly be considered a recent authority.

I had my wish gratified, and I shall never make another wish of that kind. We were sailing along easily in a moderate northerly wind about the middle of the afternoon when the Admiral’s cry came down to us. There were two spouts to the eastward. I watched them rather listlessly, for I had rather lost interest in spouts. An albatross or a frigate bird would have roused much more interest. We were seeing albatrosses occasionally, and one had followed the ship for two days, picking up scraps from the galley, and finally following the carcass of a whale when we cut it adrift. But the whole whale business had become a matter of routine.

Three boats were called away, Mr. Baker’s, Mr. Brown’s, and Mr. Macy’s. I had to move, for I was in the way of one of them; and I moved as little as possible, and gave them no further attention. Then I heard Mr. Brown speaking to me.

“Here, Tim,” he said. “If you think you can pull one of these oars, tumble in here, but be quick about it.”

Instantly I was all attention. I jumped for the boat, but stopped.

“The captain said,” I objected, “that I could n’t go until he—”

“Captain’s orders,” he interrupted sharply. “Go or not, but be quick or the other boats ’ll get away first.”

I made no reply, but gave a little nervous laugh of delight, and tumbled in. I did not know whether I could row one of the long, heavy oars or not, but I could take two hands to it, and I had rowed all my life in every kind of a boat, light and heavy. We took the water, and cast off the falls, and shoved clear. Then we stepped the mast and set the sail, and were off after my first whale. All the men were kind and helpful, but the Prince took me especially under his wing, and told me what my duties were in stepping the mast. When we were under sail he gave me rapid instructions as to my duties in meeting every emergency that ever arose in connection with the capture of a whale. I could not remember a quarter of them. It was all I could do to understand them.

Fortunately I did not have to remember. No emergency arose. We came up with our whale without much pulling, the Prince planted both his irons, and we backed off furiously. The whale stopped, astonished, Mr. Baker came up on the other side, and Starbuck got an iron fast; but not before the whale had recovered his power of motion, so that Starbuck’s iron entered at the small, and not near the side fin, where he had meant to place it. Mr. Baker’s boat was deluged with water by a sweep of the flukes, and the whale was under way, head out. Mr. Macy, I saw later, had struck the other whale, and was having no trouble.

Our whale had turned about to the eastward, and was running. We had to give him line at first, and the whale line went twisting and writhing out past me like a living snake, making a scraping, hissing noise on my oar handle. I shrank away from it. Then, with another turn around the loggerhead, it straightened and tautened, and did not go so fast, but edged by me foot by foot; and the spray began to rise in a miniature cascade on each side of the bow. Then another turn around the loggerhead, and the progress of the line past me was by inches, slower and slower, and I could hear it creaking. Then it stopped, and we were fairly off on my first sleigh-ride behind a whale. The Prince had gone aft and taken the steering oar, and Mr. Brown had come forward.

The boats were going at a rate which seemed terrific, nine or ten knots. Our boat rolled viciously in the cross-sea, and veered and bucked. I could see the Prince putting all his strength and weight on the long steering oar, first one way and then the other, to meet her as she yawed, and keep her on a straight course. The cascades of spray rose from her keel now, about a foot or two aft of the stem, higher than the gunwale; and the northerly wind caught one of them, and blew it inboard. I was drenched with it, and so was the man aft of me. We seemed to leap from sea to sea. When I gathered courage enough to look at Mr. Baker’s boat, I saw that that was a mistaken impression; but I felt as if I were on a shingle swung skittering along the top of the waves at the end of a pole.

Mr. Brown ordered us to heave in on the line. We strained our backs to the last muscle, but could only gain a fraction of an inch. Mr. Baker’s crew could do no better, and there was nothing for it but to hang on and wait for the whale to tire and slacken speed. I looked back—I continued to look back—and saw the Clearchus already hull down. I could see no sign of Mr. Macy. I watched the ship until she sank to her tops, then farther; then I could no longer make her out at all. And still that whale kept up his furious gait, head out, as though he were bound to take us to the Cape of Good Hope or to the Carroll grounds at least.

We must have been going on in that way for an hour and a half or more before the whale showed any sign of weariness. It needed a man of more experience than I had to tell the symptoms, or to perceive that our speed was slackening. Mr. Baker’s boat was just about abeam of ours, and a couple of oars’ lengths away. He had dropped back a boat’s length or so to avoid fouling us, but the two boats were within easy speaking distance, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown looked at each other, and spoke at the same instant.

“Heave?”

Then they both nodded, and we got the order. We heaved, and gained a couple of inches; heaved again, and six inches of line came in. Mr. Brown was not a yelling mate. He spoke only loud enough for us to hear.

Mr. Baker was an accomplished swearer, a linguist of parts. I did not know there was such a variety of oaths in the language until I heard him swearing at his crew, urging them to heave, and calling them more vile names than you would think any men would be willing to hear quietly. Swearing was very general on the Clearchus, and none of Mr. Baker’s language was to be taken seriously, which, of course, the men knew. I do not know what it is about the sea that prompts men to swear, but there must be something. Most of them get so that they cannot make the simplest remark without an oath. I was getting into the habit myself, although I had never been accustomed to using such language or to hearing it. Before I left home I had tried once or twice saying “Damn!” with inward quakings, and half expecting to see the heavens fall; now I said “Damn!” and other things quite fluently, without quakings of any kind, and before I got home I was a confirmed swearer. It is a bad habit, and weakens what is said rather than strengthening it. When I realized this I broke myself of the habit. Mr. Brown was no swearer, nor was Mr. Macy, nor Peter Bottom, nor the Prince, all of whom I admired, each according to his fashion.

With all Mr. Baker’s flow of language, his crew did not gain an inch more than we did; but the heaving must have had its effect on the whale. There was still a good deal of line out, perhaps fifteen or twenty fathoms, when he seemed to stop suddenly. There was a general cry of “Flukes!” and his flukes went into the air, and he sounded.

When Starbuck had struck, as I have said, he was a trifle late. He succeeded in getting one iron fast—in the small—but had to heave the other overboard. This second harpoon had been skittering over the waves ever since, here and there, according to its whim. It had not touched our line, although Mr. Brown had been afraid that it would; and it might easily have touched our line, for a whale swims low in the water, and there is seldom any part of him continually visible aft of his hump, so that there is nothing in the way. But the harpoon had touched Mr. Baker’s line several times—a good many times; each touch lasting but an instant, like the bite of a shark. A harpoon is even sharper than a shark’s tooth, and each touch had severed some of the tough strands. It was a wonder that the line had survived the heaving. It must have only just survived. When the whale sounded, Mr. Baker did not give him line, but was holding until last second. This may have been the proverbial last straw, or it may have been simply that the time had come for the line to part. At any rate, it parted. Mr. Baker cursed fluently in a really heartfelt way, and the line was rapidly hauled in. The last fathom of it was a mere feather of manila.

This left us alone fast to the whale. He did not go deep, however, and Mr. Baker was waiting, near us, for him to come up, which he did in about five minutes a few feet ahead of Mr. Baker’s boat. He came up almost vertically, his head and body shooting out of the water, and exposing his side fin. Then he fell over with a tremendous splash; but Mr. Baker had shot his lance into him, and quickly withdrawn it. The shank was bent, but Mr. Baker straightened it by knocking on the gunwale, and let him have it again.

Meanwhile we had been taking in our slack line as fast as we could, and when it tautened, heaving in on it to bring us up close enough for Mr. Brown to use his lance. We had not been able to keep the slack ahead of the whale, with all our haste, and he had got a turn around his flukes, like a half hitch, so that we could not shake it loose. It was impossible for us to haul in ahead of his flukes, and lancing them would be no more than an annoyance to the whale, like a mosquito bite. If he should take it into his head to slap that mosquito, it might prove more than an annoyance for us. There was nothing to be done but to slack off the line and try to row up to his side fin, where Mr. Brown wanted to be. We could not have hoped to do this if the whale’s attention had not been taken up with Mr. Baker’s boat. He seemed to attribute all his troubles to that boat, and was putting up a half-hearted sort of a fight; but even a half-hearted fight by a fairly husky whale is not to be taken lightly. Mr. Baker was having his hands full.

We pulled up to within a boat’s length, lay there for a few minutes watching for an opening; then, putting all our strength into our oars, we drove the boat in close to the side fin. Mr. Brown plunged the lance in deep, and began churning it slowly up and down, feeling for the heart or the great reservoir of arterial blood near it. The whale had lobtailed once upon feeling the lance, without doing any damage; but in a few strokes Mr. Brown’s lance had found the life. A tremor passed through the great body, a spout rose slowly from his spiracle black with clotted blood, he bestirred himself, and we backed off hastily. He was going into his flurry.

That flurry was not an elevating spectacle, but we all watched it. I was fascinated, and so the others seemed to be, all in Mr. Baker’s boat as well as in ours. Our attention for a long time had been so entirely taken up by the whale that not a man of the twelve—counting myself as a man—had looked about him, or been aware of anything but the whale and the two boats, and what was happening there. Suddenly Mr. Baker broke out in a perfect stream of curses. Mr. Brown smiled.

“Look!” he said. “Like a bad penny.”

We all looked where he pointed. There was the Annie Battles, not a mile away, bearing down directly upon us. Not one of us said a word, but two or three were grinning. It was beginning to seem funny.

Mr. Baker did not seem to think it funny. He had stopped his flow of profanity, whether because he had exhausted his stock, or because his choicest gems were inadequate, I could not guess; and now, standing in his place in the bow like a gaunt statue of a man, silent and motionless, he watched the Battles grow rapidly, and the foam under her forefoot, and the men upon her deck. He held his lance loosely in his hand, the shank resting on the gunwale. If she had shown any sign of changing her course, I knew that he would have ordered his crew to pull hard for her, in the hope of boarding her before she got away. She did not; and there is no sense in hard pulling to meet a vessel which is coming to meet you as straight and as fast as she can. And, although Mr. Baker was holding his lance loosely, I knew that his great fist would grip it hard at the slightest provocation.

At last the Battles put her helm down, slacked off her sheets, backed one topsail, and hung there, almost near enough for us to heave a line aboard of her. No one on her hailed us, but some of her men were standing at the rail like wooden images, watching us, while others were going lazily aloft. By this time our whale had spouted his last spout, and lay quiet in the sea, with our irons still in him and our line fast to them. Mr. Baker’s men had their oars in the water, and his boat seemed to be drifting toward the Battles. I saw Mr. Wallet and another standing by the man at the wheel. I could see even his feeble smile and his pale blue eyes and his tight curling hair, almost like a negro’s but for the color. Mr. Wallet’s was sandy, with a reddish tinge, like brown sandstone; some of our men had called his hair his brownstone front. When he saw Mr. Baker’s boat drifting toward them, he moved uneasily, his smile faded, and he spoke to the man standing with him. He knew Mr. Baker of old.

Mr. Baker did not wait to get there. “If you try to steal this whale,” he shouted, “why, damn your souls, there ’ll be blood spilled.”

The man to whom Mr. Wallet had spoken was leaning on the rail. He laughed. “There’s been blood spilled already, ain’t there? Seems to me I see it on your lance.”

“That’s good clean blood of a whale!” retorted Mr. Baker. “There’s other blood waiting that ain’t so clean. I’d hate to dirty a good lance with it.”

“Cheap talk!” said the other contemptuously. “We don’t steal whales.”

The boat was now within an oar’s length of the side of the Battles.

“I’m coming aboard,” said Mr. Baker, “to see Cap’n Coffin about it—and about another matter.”

“You can’t see Cap’n Coffin,” replied the other, who seemed to be one of the mates, and in command of the vessel at the moment, “and you don’t come aboard of us. Sheer off there!”

A number of the men at the rail of the Battles showed themselves to have spades in their hands. They put the spades over the side, and held them suspended there.

“Keep off!” said the mate of the Battles. “We ’ll smash it!”

For Mr. Baker had taken the boathook, and had hooked on to their chains. He was drawing the boat up close, when a spade smashed down on the boathook just back of the iron, and cut it off clean.

Perhaps it was too serious a matter for mere cursing. At any rate, Mr. Baker said nothing at all for some seconds, to our great surprise.

“Very well,” he said then, quietly, “if you’d rather have it that way, so be it. I ’ll report it—fully. Now I make demand upon you for Alonzo Wallet, formerly second mate of the Clearchus, a deserter from his ship.”

The mate of the Battles smiled, and beckoned Mr. Wallet. He came, with his weak smile again upon his face.

“What’s wanted of me?” he asked.

“Cap’n Nelson wants you,” Mr. Baker replied, “strange as it may seem; for you’re the most good-for-nothing officer that ever I shipped with.”

With those spades between him and Mr. Baker, Wallet’s courage had revived, but he no longer smiled. He leaned over the rail as far as he could, and shook a feeble finger at Mr. Baker.

“Tell the old man to go to hell,” he said; “and go to hell yourself, will you, Jehoram? You’re bound there now if you don’t look sharp.”

He pointed to the southwest. The sun had disappeared behind a heavy mass of black cloud, in which there appeared, as we looked at it, the glare of lightning. I had thought that it seemed early for it to be getting dark, but it had not occurred to me to look. The mass of clouds was but just above our horizon. A few men in the two boats had observed it. Mr. Brown and Mr. Baker had seen it for fifteen or twenty minutes past. It may have accounted for Mr. Baker’s readiness to cut short his controversy with the Battles.

“I’ve known about that for some time, Wallet,” said Mr. Baker; “and let me tell you that you’re in much more danger of going to hell in the next hour than I am. A whaleboat’s the safest thing that rides the sea. Maybe you did n’t know it. And you’d better shorten sail some more,” he added, “if you hope to ride it out.”

For the only answer to this the mate—if he was the mate—and Mr. Wallet both turned and looked up at the sails. The men who had gone aloft had been engaged in reefing the topsails in a very leisurely manner. Now they had to put in another reef in response to orders yelled by the mate, and they worked faster. Mr. Baker came back to the whale, and the Battles slowly drifted to the southward, taking in her great mainsail and her foresail and two of her jibs, leaving her under staysail and double-reefed topsails. By the time that was done, she had got well away from us, and the black cloud covered half the heavens. Mr. Baker had rowed up to the whale, and had deliberately planted another iron deep in the small, near his first one. I asked no questions, but Mr. Brown must have read them in my face.

“Getting ready to ride it out, Tim,” he said, smiling kindly. We had nothing to do, having fifteen or twenty fathoms of line out, and he was leaning against the cleat, watching. “A whale’s a ready made sea-anchor, if he only stays afloat; and I guess he will. And we shall be in his lee, where the seas won’t be quite so high—although there’s not much of the carcass showing.”

I turned and looked at the whale doubtfully.

“I should think, sir,” I ventured, “that Mr. Baker might foul us, or we him, if he has about the same length of line that we have.”

“No,” Mr. Brown replied, smiling again. “A drifting body always drifts broadside to the wind—to the resistance. I could prove that to you by mathematics if we had the chance, and if I had n’t forgotten the proof. But experience proves the proof to be correct, which is much more convincing than mere mathematics. You notice.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir, I will, if—”

Mr. Brown laughed. “If we get out of this, eh? We shall. Make your mind easy.”

The carcass of the whale was lying nearly east and west under the northerly wind. As the squall—pampero or whatever it was—advanced, the wind dropped, until we were heaving on an oily swell in a flat calm. The men in Mr. Baker’s boat took that chance of backing water, and of working the body of the whale slowly around until it lay very nearly north and south, while the squall was coming from the southwest. Then there was nothing to do but to watch the clouds, and to wait for the wind to strike.

The edge of the cloud seemed to be directly over us, writhing and twisting, and it was almost as dark as night.

“There she comes,” said Mr. Brown quietly; and I saw what seemed a blank wall of mist, with the black cloud above. We could see it some miles away, and it was coming fast.

“Fog, sir?” I asked, puzzled.

“Rain, and hail, probably, and wind,” said Mr. Brown.

As it came on I could see the line of rain and hail, as sharp as the cut side of a cheese; and there was a queer foaming commotion in the water at the foot of the advancing wall. It had got almost to the carcass of the whale before we felt the first cold puffs of air. Those first cold puffs were from every direction, some straight up; and the foaming commotion in the water resolved itself into an infinite series of small geysers, from one to two feet high, like columns of water sent up by explosions of shells, such as I have seen many times in the last few years when the Fort has been at target practice. At a distance of six or seven miles, even through a powerful glass, they look no higher than these did.

The edge of the wall reached the carcass, and there was a curious effect of bombardment with small white rubber balls—I should have thought at once of tennis balls if I had then ever seen a tennis ball—the balls bounding high from the elastic surface of the carcass. I knew it then for hail. The wall was past the whale, and completely hid it from sight, less than a hundred feet off, and the wind struck us like a blow from a chunk of ice. Then the hail struck us, hail mixed with rain.

We hardly knew what to do to protect our heads. It was like being pelted with rocks—rocks which there was no escaping. They were everywhere. I instinctively put up my hands over my head, and had to take them down again, for the bones of my hands were being bruised, and I was really afraid they might be broken. None of us had a stiff hat, but all wore soft hats or caps or were bareheaded. I did not mind the wind—I was not conscious of it—and I did not see what the others did; but I found myself crawling in the bottom of the boat, partly under a thwart, and pulling out a corner of the sail to protect my head. When I had time to think of anything but the safety of my own head, I saw that the others had done the same thing.

I looked out from my protecting canvas, and saw the water absolutely filled with those miniature geysers. The hail had beaten down the sea, in spite of the furious wind, until the surface was almost as smooth as a pond, with the rollers running under it as if the water were covered with silk. After a while—perhaps half an hour, perhaps a quarter—the hail stopped, and left only the rain and the wind, and the rapidly growing seas. We were sitting in a deep slush of water and hailstones, and the hailstones weighed heavily on my legs. They were beautiful, round, white stones, many as large as robins’ eggs, but most of them the size of marbles. The boat was deep with them, and rolled sluggishly. We had to get them out at once, which we did with a couple of buckets, our hats and our hands, shoveling them over the side.

I have never in my life known it to blow harder than it did in the next few hours. We rode it out, safe in the lee of our sea anchor, drenched to the skin, all of us, and very cold. Although the sea rose very quickly as soon as the hail stopped, and ran very high, the carcass of the whale seemed to smooth the seas out, and none broke around us; but the boats stood almost on end. My heart was in my mouth most of the time, but I do not think my apprehensions were evident to the others. Heaven knows I tried hard enough, for I was even more afraid of showing fear than I was of the wind and the sea. I think the fact that we were in a small boat, and near the water, was a help. I was more used to that, and, somehow, I never feel so helpless in a small boat as I do in a ship. I have not got over that feeling to this day. I suppose I should have felt better still if I had been alone or with no one but Jimmy Appleby. A man seems to have more of a chance in a small boat, and is not subject to the orders—and the mistakes—of somebody. That somebody might be like Mr. Wallet. If there is a mistake, it is his own.

Night fell while it was blowing viciously and raining. In a few hours the rain stopped, but the wind did not. It seemed to blow harder, and it gradually shifted to the southeast; and after a while the stars came out. I do not know how long it was, for I had lost all sense of time. I had got over the worst of my scare, and I was too tired to think. I crouched down in the boat, and I fell asleep, soaked and cold as I was.

It was gray dawn when I awoke, stiff and cramped. I saw Mr. Brown in his place, gazing out at the eastern sky. He had been awake all night, ready to cut if the carcass of the whale showed signs of sinking; but it was still afloat, and no lower in the water than it had been the night before. Mr. Baker’s boat was so near that we could almost have touched oars.

I made some noise in crawling out. Mr. Brown turned his head and smiled at me, but said nothing. I took that as a sort of an invitation. I got up and stood beside him, and we looked out together over that desolate waste of heaving gray water, with the white tops of breaking seas, and a faint touch of light here and there, and gray clouds driving over, but no color yet. I was oppressed with that feeling of melancholy and loneliness—and littleness—which always seized me at such a time. I think Mr. Brown felt it too. I looked around me, and saw two men evidently just awake, and the Prince standing like a statue, silent and dignified, gazing at the east. I could not help wondering afresh what he was in his own country, and what was his own country. Whatever country it was, he ought to have been a chief in it—princeps—instead of being no more than a boatsteerer on a whaler, and the associate of men few of whom were his equals. If it had been the fashion to be black, instead of white, even the officers, excepting Mr. Brown and Mr. Macy, would have been his acknowledged inferiors.

There was no sign of the Battles or of the Clearchus—nothing within our horizon but the wide ocean, deep indigo in the distance, with great seas rolling and tumbling, dark green near the boat, their tops a ghastly white. After an hour or two my heart began to sink. How could it be expected that anybody would find us, a speck in that vast and dreary expanse of ocean? Mr. Brown seemed confident enough, but my heart had sunk down into my soaked boots when, in the middle of the forenoon, he spoke to me. No doubt he guessed my feelings. They may have been evident enough.

“See there, Tim; almost abeam of us.”

We were streaming out to the northwest behind the whale. I looked, but I could see nothing but the tops of distant seas rising and falling. I shook my head.

“Can’t you make it out? Three stubby topmasts, almost in line, and the to’gallan’yards? If you knew them as well as I do—”

“The Clearchus?”

He nodded. “I think so. I’m pretty sure.”

He was right, as he was apt to be. Mr. Baker had seen it too. The Clearchus picked us up before noon, got the whale alongside, and began to cut-in at once, rough and blowing as it was. She had been caught by the blow with Mr. Macy’s whale alongside. They saw the blow coming, and tried to save the case, but they did not succeed, and the whale broke adrift, taking some of our tackle with it. They had to cut and run for it. We never saw that whale again.

It moderated toward the middle of the afternoon, and by the time we were ready to try out, we had a clear sky and a gentle breeze.