When we had the trying-out finished—the whale made about sixty-three barrels—we were not far from Bazaruta Island, and the captain thought it a good chance to lay in some wood. Two boats were sent ashore, the men taking axes, while the Clearchus lay near, and the rest of the crew were busy with their cleaning and scrubbing. I was sent ashore with the boats. The island, or at any rate the part of it which we saw, was uninhabited, and was covered with a dense jungle of woods and vines and creepers. There was an abundance of wood, but it was rather hard to get, and we were there for two days, the boats taking off the wood as fast as we got it cut. The second day I got lost in the jungle, and I might be there yet if it had not been for Peter.

There were a good many snakes in the jungle, the cobra among them. I did not know much about snakes, did not recognize the cobra, and did not appreciate its quality. I had become separated from the others in my pursuit of trees which I could tackle alone, and which would be of any value as fuel. When at last I looked up, I realized that I was lost. I had stepped so thoroughly around the tree that my trail in had become obliterated, and I could not tell which way to go. I tried several ways, but they all ended in a tangle of vegetation, and I began to get really scared, but I did not like to yell. I stopped and looked about me, and I saw a snake crawling sluggishly away.

My only experience with snakes had been with these little green or mottled-brown grass snakes, about two feet long or less, or with adders, and a couple of big blacksnakes. The blacksnakes I let alone, but I was accustomed to catch the grass snakes and treat them as pets. I had a box in our back yard, covered with wire netting, in which I put them, and kept them until my mother made too strenuous objection to the practice. Then, although I could not understand why she should object so strongly, I bowed to the inevitable. They were pretty things, and quite harmless; even useful, but she neither knew nor cared about that. So, when I saw that snake in the jungle, instead of letting him go peaceably, as anybody else would have done, and glad that he was going, I leaped after him. It was not so very big, perhaps three or four feet long.

The snake hurried when I jumped, but I kept on, and it stopped and faced me, rearing its head erect, some distance from the ground. Its hood puffed out, and its head waved slowly from side to side. I began to be scared then, and backed away. There was a slight movement in the vines and bushes back of the snake, they parted silently, and I saw Peter looking at me. I did not speak, but pointed at the snake. Peter did not delay. His axe fell upon the snake, and cut it cleanly in two parts.

“Come, lad,” said Peter. “We missed you, and nobody knew which way you’d gone. They’re about done.”

I remonstrated. “But, Peter, my tree.” And I pointed at the fallen monarch of the forest, which was about six inches through at the butt, and twenty-five feet long.

Peter smiled. “Aye, lad, I heard it fall. It was by that I found you. Maybe we ’ll get it, and maybe not. I think they’re ready to put off to the ship and are waiting for us.”

So I followed him, leaving my precious tree, and leaving the pieces of the snake still writhing about on the ground. According to all my lore, they would continue to writhe until sunset, which was not far off. I determined to add to my curriculum a brief course upon snakes. I felt sure that the course would meet Mr. Brown’s approval, and that he was qualified to give it.

We made sail on the Clearchus, and stood for the southern end of Madagascar; rounded it, and stood northerly. There was rather a strong current against us, but the wind held strong from the east and southeast, and we made nearly four knots in spite of the current. Peter was occupied with the stove boat. He had little help, but he did not want any. There was a fascination in watching his deliberate movements, every one of which was to the certain end; the same kind of fascination which I used to feel in watching Oman, a cabinet-maker, at work. Oman seemed slow, and his manner of working would not have been approved by a modern efficiency expert, but he knew his trade from top to bottom, and was a master workman. He loved his work, as any master workman must. Not one of his deliberate movements was wasted, and the beautiful end was reached with surprising ease and quickness; and what an end it was! Peter was no cabinet-maker, but his method of working was the same.

When we had made about half the length of Madagascar without even raising a spout, we fell in with another New Bedford whaler, the Apollo, and Captain Nelson went aboard of her for a gam with Captain Hendrickson. I did not go. They gammed from early morning to late in the afternoon, and then I saw Captain Nelson’s boat coming back. The mate of the Apollo, who had been visiting us, hurried away with his men. As far as I could gather from what I overheard, the master of the Apollo had not com­mun­i­cated anything of value. She was a full ship, however, on her way home, and the old man—Captain Nelson—felt sure that she had found some new cruising ground, either in the Indian Ocean or in the Pacific, he thought more likely the Indian Ocean. He had spent the day in detective work, trying to find some clue to its location, but without result. Whaling captains, when they have happened upon a new field, guard the secret as carefully as they can, but it leaks out in a year or two. No doubt Captain Hendrickson was laughing at him at that moment. He said this, standing on deck, looking back at the Apollo sinking into the sea behind us. She was hull down already, enveloped in a purple haze, for the sun was near its setting. The captain stood for some time silently gazing, until the old-fashioned square topsails of the Apollo were lost in the haze. Then he turned, smiling, to go below.

“I ’ll find it, by Godfrey,” he muttered to himself, “if I have to comb these seas with a fine-toothed comb.”

Two days later we raised a spout nearly in sight of Tamatave. Tamatave is on the east coast of Madagascar, in about 18° south latitude. It was a calm morning, and the whale was about three miles off. He was lying lazily on the surface, and we watched him for an hour and a half, waiting for him to go down. At last he decided to go. His flukes went straight up into the air, and he went down in a very leisurely manner, as if it was almost too much trouble to eat. It was as if he sighed and said, “Well, here goes. I suppose I must get to work.” That was the way I felt on that morning, and I had no doubt the whale felt much the same. Why should n’t whales feel so?

We lowered two boats, and pulled to the spot. There was a gentle little breeze, and both boats put up their sails and sailed to and fro, waiting for him to come up. I was enjoying myself thoroughly, and did not care if he never came up. Indeed, we began to think he never would. It got to be an hour since he had gone down, and there was no sign of him. Then an hour and five minutes, and we lowered the sail and unstepped the mast. This was hardly done when he appeared silently, an eighth of a mile away, heading toward us. We were in an excellent situation, for as he was coming on, and could not see us, there was nothing for us to do but wait for him.

He continued to forge ahead slowly, Mr. Baker’s boat, half a mile or more astern of him, pulling up as hard as the men could pull. The whale was to windward of us, and we could hear his spout plainly, loud and hoarse and deep-toned. It sounded like the exhaust of the Monohanset, the boat that ran between New Bedford and the Vineyard. We waited, our oars out, and still he came on blindly, steering a somewhat zigzag course, to enlarge his field of vision, and stopping now and then, with his head out of water, to listen.

He was pretty near us now, and the Prince was getting excited and impatient. He signalled Mr. Brown with his lips moving silently, to have the men pull a few strokes to lay us on, but Mr. Brown shook his head. Again the whale heaved his head out, almost within darting distance.

“Now, pull! A good stroke!”

We pulled with all our might. It was only about thirty feet that we had to go. We ranged alongside of his head, and he was very plainly trying to make out what the noise was, and where it came from. The moment we came within his field of sight he began to settle. There was no other possible escape; but he was not quick enough, and the Prince planted one iron deep in his shoulder, just above his fin. The whale had settled too deep for the second iron, which did not bite at all. By the time both irons had been let go we were backing off.

That whale immediately lost all signs of leisureliness and laziness, and went down so fast that it was all we could do to keep the line whipping clear out of the tub. The end of that tub was approaching rapidly, and the other tub was bent on as fast as a man could work. Still there was no sign of slackening in the speed of sounding, and the end of the second tub, too, was not far off.

“The drug!” was the cry. “Drug, there! Hurry!”

The drug, or drag, was hastily passed. Our drags were of two pieces of plank, crossed, and bolted securely together, with a loop of whale line through the centre. On the opposite side from the loop a strong, stubby staff projected about a foot. It was meant that a piece of canvas should be fastened to the staff. The canvas might survive dragging through the water, and would make the drag more conspicuous on the surface; but there was none on our drags that day. There seldom was any.

The end of the line in a tub is always exposed for just such occasions, and our second tub of line was hastily bent on to the loop of the drag, and the drag held clear, ready to go overboard. This was scarcely done when the last coil of line snapped out of the tub, and the drug made a bee line for the bottom of the sea. We lay there helpless, without a foot of whale line in the boat, and our whale—nobody knew where he was exactly, but somewhere under us, from one to two hundred fathoms deep. A line will follow all the windings of its course under water, very nearly, and the whale might have turned at some depth, and the line still go straight down.

That must have been just what this whale did, as it turned out, for he rose soon after, about a quarter of a mile away, and made off just a little faster than the boats could go, although we tried hard. The drug appeared some minutes after the whale had shown himself, and went skittering off after him, jumping from sea to sea, or from one side to the other, tantalizingly near. Both boats followed it. It did not go very much faster than we did, pulling our hearts out for an hour dead to windward; but it gained on us very slowly, and we gave it up at last, and lay on our oars, while we watched that drug flash in the sun, farther and farther away. It flashed its last, and we turned and pulled back to the ship, leaving the whale in possession of two good harpoons, almost two hundred fathoms of nearly new whale line, and a perfectly good drug, a work of art. I hoped he would enjoy their use. We never heard anything more of any of them. Possibly, even now, there is a whale, fairly old, swimming the seas somewhere, with an old rusty harpoon encysted in his shoulder, the remains of a frayed old line trailing from it, fringed with green or brown trailing weed along its whole length, encrusted with barnacles, and alive with little crabs and sea-horses. I am confident that he has never been taken.

After our exploit with that whale we cruised to the eastward to the north of Mauritius, but did not raise a spout. Captain Nelson seemed to have made up his mind that there were no more whales to be found in those waters, for he stood away to the northwest, for the northern end of Madagascar. We passed within sight of it, but did not stop.

There was a good deal of speculation among the crew as to where we were going, for although the mastheads were kept manned, the routine of cruising grounds was abandoned, and the Clearchus was under a press of sail for a whaler. The men insisted that she was bound for some definite port on the east coast, and when we had passed Madagascar, and the course was changed by a point or so, many of them said that it was Zanzibar. In the forecastle they had long disputes upon the matter, and I listened, but took no part in them. I was often there.

My own position on the ship was somewhat unusual. I was still cabin boy, but I was one of Mr. Brown’s crew too, and had been for some months. I had grown nearly a foot in the past year, was a great, overgrown sixteen-year-old boy, with more muscle than I knew how to manage. I must have been a raw, red, awkward chap, but fortunately for me I did not know it. In virtue of my place in the boat I had acknowledged right in the forecastle, and I availed myself of it as often as I could. I loved to be there, sitting on the deck, perhaps, under the flaring tin lamp, or on a sea-chest which stood in a dark corner, and listening to the talk of the men. That talk, I suppose, was not edifying, but I did not join in it, and I heard there many yarns of whales and whaling, to which I listened with open ears and open mouth—and open nose. The smells of that forecastle!

I found out where we were probably bound by the simple expedient of looking on the chart. I had been rather neglecting my privileges in that respect. The course which was being pricked there led straight to Zanzibar or very near it, although there was no certainty that the course might not be changed. There was no other port of any consequence but Zanzibar. There was elation among most of the old sailors when I told them of it, but Peter shook his head doubtfully.

“Zanzibar,” he said thoughtfully. “I know it well enough. It’s full of wickedness, and that of no white man’s sort. Sodom and Gomorrah were nothing to it.”

Three days later we dropped our anchor in the harbor of Zanzibar.