William John Hopkins

We had the usual variations in weather, some good, some bad, but none very bad, to the Carroll grounds. For two thirds of the way the wind was mostly pretty strong from the west or southwest, giving the Clearchus what she liked best; for the last third of the way it drew in from the southeast, although we were not at any time in the region of the steady southeast trades, merely touching upon the border of that region toward the very last of the run. We ran into no gales, and made a passage of about five weeks, arriving on the Carroll grounds the last week in March. We then shortened sail, and began to cruise. It was the captain’s intention to quarter the ground thoroughly once, making slowly to the southeast, which was the windward side, and then to beat up for the Cape.

For a week we beat back and forth in fine weather without a sign of a whale. I had almost ceased to think of them, and spent my spare time in surreptitious games with Peter or with the group of men who were usually gathered about him; or I stood by the windlass or sat between the knightheads—anywhere where I could not be spied from aft—and looked out ahead over the white-capped seas, feeling the brisk wind on my cheeks, and listening to the noise of the water under the bows, and to the gentle creaking of the spars and rigging. To me those are inexpressibly soothing sounds; they have always been so, and are to this day. The noises of the life of the ship—not very loud at their worst, in such a case—are far behind you, and they come faintly to your ears, as if from another world. They do not seem real, as do the bubbling of the water under the bow, and the wash of it as it passes astern, and the faint noise of breaking seas, and the soft sound of the wind on the sails.

That pleasant mode of life was not to last forever. One afternoon I was lying on my back on the heel of the bowsprit. I had just finished my chores after dinner, and had lain down to gaze up at the sails, full and straining, and at the sky above them. My gaze travelled up the foremast, past the topsails, which were braced well around, for we were sailing with the wind forward of the beam. The fore truck described slow ellipses against the sky, and I was fascinated in watching them. Now and then I caught a glimpse, past the bellying topsail, of the masthead man. He seemed very far up. He was leaning wearily against the hoops, as if he might have been asleep. Suddenly he straightened alertly. I knew what to expect then, and I sat up as the cry floated down to me; then I jumped to my feet, and ran to Mr. Brown’s boat.

There were two spouts, about three miles to leeward, and the whales seemed to be travelling at about the same rate as the ship, and pretty near together. The spouts rose as regularly as the exhaust of a tugboat, although nowhere near as fast; there were ten or twelve seconds between them. The ship was laid around on a course nearly parallel with that of the whales, and we waited to see if they would not go down to feed. There was no sign of their doing so, however, and after waiting over twenty minutes, we lowered three boats. Our boat—that means Mr. Brown’s—was one of the three. I took my place in it without asking leave, but as Mr. Brown looked right at me, and made no objection, and as the Prince even smiled at me, I thought it was probably what was expected.

By hard pulling we got right in the course of the whales, Mr. Baker and ourselves taking the farther one, and Mr. Macy the nearer. Our whale was a little in advance of the other. Then we waited, our oars in our hands, to be ready for any change of course of the whales. Approaching a whale head on is one of the favorite ways, for a whale cannot see anything directly ahead of him, strange and inconvenient as that may seem. The whales came on in a business-like way, rising to spout, then pitching under, until they were perhaps within fifty or sixty feet of the boats. The Prince was all set to strike, and the four oarsmen gripping their oars hard, I, at least, with my nerves on edge. Then the whales brought up suddenly; stopped as completely as if they had run into a wall. Something had excited their suspicion, although the men in the boats were as still as death. Our whale—I should not have called him ours so soon—raised his head from the water, as if listening, and Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown signalled the men to pull up. It was only a little way, and the two boats almost leaped from the water. I could see nothing of the whale, pulling, as I was, with my back to him, and my eyes glued to the oar of the man in front of me, but I could imagine that whale pricking up his ears, if he had had any. Mr. Baker’s boat was just abeam of us, to take him on his other side. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the men in her laying to it, and the spray flying from her bow.

It is utterly useless to dart the harpoon at the front of a sperm whale. The weapon almost always bounds back as if it were a mass of rubber it had struck against. We had to get as far as his eye before a chance would be offered. I saw his great cliff-like head shoot by. Then, as we came within range of his vision, within ten feet of him, he suddenly sank away from the boat and out of sight like a lump of lead, without a motion of his fins, or his flukes either, so far as I could judge by hearing. The Prince had darted, and so had Starbuck—and had missed by inches, at ten feet. It was comical to see the consternation and amazement of Starbuck, and I have no doubt the Prince’s surprise was nearly as great, although he would not show it so plainly. I did hear a grunt from him, however, and an exclamation. The harpoons had clashed under water. When they were hauled in, the Prince found the shank of his bent, and a gouge, fresh and bright, deep in the shank at the point of bending; and the edge of Starbuck’s was dulled and turned.

Mr. Macy’s boat, with George Hall the boat-steerer, had an exactly similar experience. Mr. Macy had not headed that boat long enough to overcome entirely the effect of Wallet’s slackness and generally slipshod way of doing things, and his crew did not respond quite so quickly or so well. Consequently his whale had just enough warning to begin to move, but not enough time to get under way, or to find out definitely what was up. His only escape was to sink from the head of the boat as quickly as a marlinspike that has been dropped overboard, or an anchor. Hall, however, had no chance to dart, and he had had experience enough to know it. We did not see those whales again except at a distance which was perfectly safe, and then they were swimming head out, making ten or twelve knots.

Later in the day I came upon a sort of a consolation gathering. Starbuck and the Prince and George Hall were the central figures, and there were the other two boatsteerers, Azevedo and Miller, and all the green hands standing on the fringe of the circle, with two or three older men. Starbuck was much mortified at his failure, and offered what excuse he could. The Prince may have been as much mortified as Starbuck, but he offered no excuse and said little. Hall was giving comfort, saying that it was not uncommon for whales to settle in that way, and escape, when they had no time to round out flukes and sound, although he did not see how they did it. No harpooner was to be blamed for missing a whale under those circumstances.

Then there was a babel of voices, each man who had seen it happen and thought about it at all—a man could hardly help thinking about it if he had once seen it—giving his own theory of how it was done. They seemed to run to the idea of interior ballast tanks. Hall smiled.

“It does not seem quite quick enough,” he said. “The whale would have to take in water ballast pretty sudden to sink as quick as he does. Besides, water won’t sink in water. If he could take in lead or old junk into his tanks, it would be different. I know that gannets have something like that, cells under the skin that they can fill or empty of air through their lungs; and man-o’-war birds have something of the kind, I believe, and so have other birds. I’ve seen ’em and you’ve all seen ’em. They seem to contract when they want to get down pretty quick. But I don’t pretend to know how a whale does it.”

There was more talk which I could not follow. After a while Azevedo asked Hall about what he called the “slick” or “glip,” and how he thought that com­mun­i­cation was kept up. I did not know what they were talking about, of course. Hall shook his head, and said he had never seen any evidence of com­mun­i­cation, although he had heard of it, but he would not commit himself on the subject, and he asked Peter. Peter said that he did not know anything about it.

“What is that, Peter?” I asked in an undertone. “What’s glip?” I knew what a slick was.

“I don’t rightly know, Tim,” he answered. “Whales always leave a slick—a smooth place, oily-like—on the water when they round out and sound quietly. It must be something like the oil bags we had over our bows in that gale off Hatteras. But they say that there’s a sort of a telegraph between the whale and his slick—as far as I can make out, that there’s a way the whole school has of knowing if a boat so much as crosses the line between a whale and his slick. So, if a boat gets into the slick, or crosses that line, the whole school goes tearing to windward. It may be so,” he added, shaking his head. “I don’t say it ain’t, for you hear of many curious things at sea that turn out to be true, but it seems a trifle too much like magic to me. So I say that I don’t know anything about it, and that’s true enough. I don’t.”

I laughed. To me it seemed like a fairy tale; but, as Peter had said, you hear of many curious things at sea which turn out to be true, and this might be one of them. If it is true I can think of no possible explanation. I do not know the truth of the matter to this day.

A few days later we sighted another spout. Mr. Brown and Mr. Baker lowered for him, for they said that the Prince and Starbuck ought to have another chance. This was a lone whale, which very obligingly waited for us to come up with him, and both boats got fast. He put up no fight at all, and in a quarter of an hour he lay fin out. This was the sort of thing that disgusted me with whaling, and made it seem nothing more than a bloody, dirty business, which tended to brutalize the men who took part in it. A whale should be willing—determined—to fight for his life, if it was worth anything to him. A fight made it all worth while, and the better the fight the more worth while it seemed, to me, at any rate. The prospect of a good fight always did fill me with elation, in spite of myself. I confess that it does even now, in spite of my age and experience, which has been acquired uniformly in the avoidance of fights; but any kind of a fight seems good to me, in my heart of hearts. It is a reprehensible instinct, but it is just as surely an instinct as it is reprehensible according to our modern code.

This whale may not have regarded his life as of sufficient value to be worth fighting for. At any rate, his actions and appearance aroused suspicions, and when he was cut-in the suspicions were apparently confirmed, for the blubber was light and dry. Accordingly, instead of cutting the carcass adrift, they cut into it, and proceeded to investigate his internal economy with spades and knives. I hung over the rail and watched the operation with much interest. It reminded me of the occasion, five or six years before, when Jimmy Appleby and I had dissected two rats, with rather dull knives, on the top of his high back fence. We got thoroughly smeared with blood and gurry, but found nothing of value, and did not add to our information on the subject of rats. The whale was much the same, so far as I could see. The men got very thoroughly smeared, but they found nothing of value.

While we were in the midst of this bloody business, and most of the men who were not engaged in it were hanging over the rail, as I was, I felt a tap upon my shoulder. I turned and saw Peter, who took me to the port side.

“Look there, Timmie,” he said, pointing.

I had no trouble in seeing what he was pointing at. It was the Annie Battles, only three or four miles off, and headed directly for us. There was a brisk breeze, which she had just forward of the beam, very nearly her best point of sailing. She was coming fast, and was a pretty sight, I thought. Peter had the same thought. We watched her in silence for some minutes, and then he sighed and shook his head.

“A pretty sight,” he said, “and an able boat. There’s none better, and it’s a pity.”

“A pity that there’s none better?” I asked.

“A pity that it should mean trouble every time she heaves in sight. I don’t know what kind of mischief she’s up to this time, but look at our officers, lad. They don’t know either, but they expect trouble of some kind. Would n’t you think so yourself?”

Captain Nelson, with Mr. Baker, Mr. Brown and Mr. Macy, was standing just forward of the after house, his glass at his eye. None of the four were saying anything, but all were gazing soberly at the Battles, which held her course as if she meant to run us down. The captain said something in a low tone to Mr. Baker, who nodded and started leisurely forward.

“I wish,” said Peter, “that she’d leave us alone, and get about her business. It’s over two months since we’ve seen her, and I hoped that was the last. But she seems to be keeping tabs on us, and to know just where to find us. She ’ll keep turning up, like enough, all through our voyage, just when we’ve begun to forget her. I’d give something to know what they’re up to. What does she want, anyway? What is she doing it for?”

It is very likely, even in the light of our later knowledge of the Annie Battles, that they were not up to anything in particular, and did not want anything except to plague us, and exasperate us, and set us all to wondering just as they were doing. At sea, on a long voyage, with a faster vessel, and the certainty of being able to sail around us in any weather, that exasperation could be carried to a high pitch. We had no means of knowing what was going on in the Battles; but, all this granted, I could not guess their motive. It was possible that they were after our whales, but Captain Coffin was an able whaling master, and if that was the explanation—I put the question to Peter.

“Oh, no, lad,” he replied quickly. “If that was the reason, they’d just stay with us—dog us about. They don’t do that, but—Aye, aye, sir.”

For Mr. Baker had come up to us, and was telling Peter to go to his boat, but not to hurry. They did not want any stir on the decks. Then he passed on to tell others of his crew the same thing. Mr. Macy was strolling about the deck on a similar errand. One by one the men drifted down to their boats, cast off the lashings, and stood with the falls in their hands, ready to lower. The Battles was still coming on, headed directly for us. She was a mile away, and the men stood like statues by their boats; the distance diminished to a half-mile and then to a quarter. There was a deep silence on the ship, while the noise of the surgeons at the operating-table rose to us over the starboard rail. They knew nothing of the Battles. When the schooner was a cable’s length away she was still heading directly for us, and seemed likely to strike us amidships.

It was too much for Mr. Baker. “Ahoy, there!” he roared. “Damn you, do you want to run us down?”

“Are you there?” cried a jeering voice from the Battles. “Why don’t you lower?”

As the sound of the voice reached us, however, the Battles kept off a little, so that she would just clear our stern. Captain Nelson nodded, and Mr. Macy lowered instantly, cast off, and the men pulled hard to intercept her. They did not quite succeed in doing that, and the Battles swept by with her main chains about six inches beyond the utmost reach of Hall’s boathook. Hall made an instant decision. Throwing down the boathook, he grabbed a harpoon, to which the whale line was already bent, and darted with all his force at the chains of the Battles. The harpoon stuck in the hull and quivered there for a moment, between the chains; then, as strain came on it, it pulled out, having nothing to hold it, the barb caught on the chains, and there they were towing as comfortably as ever they did behind a whale.

From the deck of the Battles there came a roar for a sharp spade, while Mr. Macy was exhorting his men to heave and heave hearty. There were only a few feet to gain, for the whaleboat was almost lapping the hull of the schooner. What they would have done when they had gained a place under her quarter I could not imagine. I wondered. Mr. Macy might have been in the same predicament, but it was not likely. He was not the man to go ahead without plan, and he was working as if for a definite end. What that plan was we were not to know, for the spades succeeded in severing the line before the hulls lapped, and the frayed end dropped into the water. It was fortunate, perhaps. What chance would six men have had against twenty or more?

In the brief struggle the Battles had gone on farther than she meant to, and was now some distance astern of us; but as soon as she had succeeded in dropping Mr. Macy she stood up along our starboard beam, a short distance away. Meanwhile, Mr. Baker’s boat had been lowered, taking the captain, and had pulled out a few boat’s lengths, and lay there, waiting for the Battles. The men who had been working on the carcass of the whale had stopped work, and stood watching to see what would happen.

The Battles came on until she was nearly abeam of us, then she slacked off her sheets, spilling the wind from her sails. Her crew seemed interested in the surgical operation on the whale.

“Did you find any?” hailed the man who seemed to be in command.

Captain Nelson paid no attention to this question, but his men pulled toward the schooner.

“What do you want?” the man demanded sharply. “Keep off! Stay where you are, and let’s settle it.”

“I’m coming aboard of you,” Captain Nelson said. “I’m coming to see Cap’n Coffin. There are some matters to be settled between us.”

The Battles was shooting ahead, losing way slowly, and the men in the captain’s boat again began pulling.

“You can’t see Cap’n Coffin,” the man began impatiently. “You’ve been told that often enough. Damn it,” he added, almost changing his mind, “if I should let you come aboard and see Cap’n Coffin, I’d warrant you’d have all the time you wanted to settle any matters that’re on your mind. It’d serve you right, and if the consequences ’d be all on your own head, I’d do it. But they would n’t and I won’t. I never will. Understand?”

We heard the conversation plainly, and I was curious to know what he meant by his remark about consequences. It did not seem to give Captain Nelson any concern. He made no reply, and the boat continued to pull toward the schooner. Mr. Macy had been coming up quietly while the Battles was busy with Captain Nelson, and he was not far astern, his men pulling strongly and easily. We heard the order to trim in the sheets, and at the same time several men took their places at the side, holding spades in their hands. It was their old trick. The captain’s boat was only a few strokes off.

“Keep off!” was the warning.

For answer Starbuck grabbed for the chains with the boathook. A spade smashed down upon it and knocked it out of his hand. The sheets of the Battles had been trimmed in, she heeled to the breeze, began to gather speed, and was slowly passing the bow of the boat. Starbuck leaped, landed on her wales, and had one leg over the rail before the men on the Battles knew what he was after. Before he could get the other leg over, three men seized him; I saw them struggle with him for an instant, break his hold on the rail, and throw him into the sea.

The Battles was now well under way, the boat was fast dropping astern, and Starbuck was in the water. Mr. Macy was not quite up, and it was a hopeless chase from the start, but both boats tried to make a race of it for a quarter of a mile. When they gave it up, and stopped rowing, I saw Wallet come out from behind the quarter boat, where he had been standing, hidden from us, and take his place at the topsail. It was too far to see clearly without a glass what he was doing there, but he seemed to put his thumb to his nose at Mr. Baker and the captain. That was too much for me, and I laughed until I nearly had hysterics, it was so like him.

The boats lay there for some time, the men all watching the Battles fast disappearing in the distance. Then they pulled slowly back to the ship. Starbuck had swum to the ship, and stood dripping beside me, watching the Battles with sober eyes. When I laughed so immoderately, he turned his eyes upon me with disapproval, but he took the contagion, and, much against his will, he was forced to smile.

“But it’s no laughing matter, Tim,” he said. “I’d like to know what’s wrong on that vessel. There’s something wrong. I know Fred Coffin well. We live only a few doors apart—only two houses between us, and we were at school together. He is n’t so much older than me; three years, about. I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

“Why,” I said, “what could happen to him—on his own vessel?”

“Anything,” Starbuck answered. “Anything at all. Ever hear the story of the ship Junior and Cap’n Arch Mellen? It happened in fifty-eight, or fifty-seven, but it’s all true, and it might happen now—any time, unless men’s hearts are changed.”

“Tell me,” I said eagerly. “I never heard of it; I never even heard of the ship Junior.”

He smiled down at me; after all, not so much down, for I was nearly as tall as he.

“There’s a good many ships you never heard of, I guess. I ’ll tell you the story of the ship Junior, the first chance I get. The boats are coming back now, and I want to get into dry clothes.”

By the time the boats were on the davits the Battles was more than hull down to the southward, and was fast sinking her topsails.