As we ran to the northward, we had the wind on the beam or aft of that, most of the time, usually brisk to strong, as fair a wind as we could have wished for. The hurricane season was about to begin. Hurricanes are most frequent in March and April, although occasionally there is a severe one toward the last of February; and their tracks most commonly cross the Fiji or Samoan Islands in a general southerly direction, then curving more and more to the eastward. We stood well to the west of Fiji, and were past the Ellices before the end of the southern summer, so that we escaped them entirely—if there were any—and were usually running about as fast as the old Clearchus was able, under the southeast trades, and under a regular trade-wind sky.

It was seldom necessary to touch a brace or a halliard, and our crew had very little to do. The mastheads were kept manned, but I soon came to the conclusion that that was done merely as a matter of form, or from habit, and not for any practical purpose, for we raised spouts on two occasions on our way up without lowering or even changing the course. Each time Captain Nelson came on deck, looked at the spoutings for a couple of minutes, and turned away without saying anything. And each time Mr. Baker asked him, “Lower, sir?” rather wistfully, and the old man shook his head, and went below again. I did not know what to make of it, and Mr. Baker did not seem to know either. He appeared to be dumbfounded—completely flabbergasted—and he looked after the captain, and, on the second occasion, I heard him mutter that he’d be eternally damned to hell-fire, or words to that effect—with sundry embellishments—if he knew what the captain was up to. I made up my mind that the idea of finding the mythical Apollo island obsessed him. We had over two thousand barrels on board, and needed only three or four hundred to fill us up. Think of the dis­ap­point­ment of finding a gold mine, with nowhere to put the gold! Easy money, for the mere picking up, and no way of carrying it off.

I had always been in the habit of standing by the bulwarks, when I had the chance, or sitting curled up in some favorable spot with an unobstructed view, and watching the water and the sky. There was more chance now than usually, and I would stand by the main rigging, or lie in a coil of rope by the heel of the bowsprit, for an hour at a time, and watch the Southern Ocean slip by. I generally had the “Navigators” in my hand, held open by my thumb, but I read very little. It is fine print, and it was much more interesting to watch the trade wind clouds, or to glance at the swaying masthead men, or at the birds which accompanied us. There was usually a frigate-bird or two, or a tropic-bird, although these birds were rare; gannets and boobies and terns and many others. It was my delight to see a frigate-bird rise majestically in great circles, higher and higher, without a motion of his wings or his body that I could detect, until he was a mere speck in the blue. At sight of flying fish rising in flight, perhaps before albacore, or of a gannet or a booby that had been successful in fishing, he begins to drop, at first in circles; when still at a considerable height, he closes his wings, makes his body miraculously small, falls like a stone or a bullet, and comes up before the poor gannet, threatening, the robber that he is! The gannet instantly drops the fish, the frigate dives through the air, and, getting it before it has fallen far, rises to eat. He did not always get his fish by robbery, but caught flying fish at the height of their flight in the air. I never saw one dive into the sea, and the men said they were unable to rise from the water, but must keep on the wing, waking or sleeping, from land to land. I never saw one rob a tropic-bird either, but they used sometimes to threaten the masthead men.

One morning I was standing by the rail, Captain Coffin pacing the deck behind me, although it was not his watch. I should not speak of him as Captain, for he was not captain on the Clearchus, although I suppose still captain of the Battles. We had run out of the trades, and we were trying to make an easterly course, but we were not making out very well. We had frequent showers, some of which were almost of the proportions of deluges; and calms and light airs from any point of the compass about a quarter of the time. When the wind did come, it was mostly ahead, and we made little progress. On the night before this morning, I remember, there was a great deal of phos­phor­escence in the water. The ship was scarcely moving, but the little ripples at her bow glowed brightly; her wake was a luminous road, stretching out far astern, every whirl and eddy a vortex of living light. I saw a shark clearly outlined in greenish light, and a sudden burst of fireworks at a little distance showed where a school of flying fish had been disturbed and driven from the water like the balls of a roman candle.

I was thinking of those flying fish as I stood by the rail that morning, and I had brought my old battered glass along. It was a calm morning, hot and sticky, the sea fairly quiet. Suddenly I saw what I thought must be a school of flying fish break the water about a quarter of a mile away and take their flight. They looked too big for flying fish, their flight in the air too short, and I brought my glass to bear. I soon caught them again, and they certainly did not look like fish, but I was not ready to believe they were what they looked like. I turned to Captain Coffin, and asked him.

He stopped by my side, waving the glass away when I offered it to him. The creatures soon appeared again, coming out of the water in a spurt or gust.

“Oh,” he said, “flying squid.”

“But,” I asked, “do squid fly?”

He laughed. “No,” he said, “no more than flying fish fly—nor so much. As you see. There must be something chasing them.”

At this moment the musical, quavering cry of the Admiral came down to us: “Bl-o-o-ows!”

The spout was dead to windward, about five or six miles off. I, at any rate, could not see it from the deck, even with my glass, there was such a quiver of heated air at the horizon. Captain Nelson came on deck, went up to the main crosstrees, and stayed there for some time, watching. When he came down Captain Coffin asked him what he made of it.

“Can’t make out,” he answered. “Something queer going on. May be swordfish, or perhaps those big sharks; or killers, except for the latitude. We ’ll stand up that way as fast as we can.”

“Lower, sir?” Mr. Baker asked, knowing well what the answer was likely to be.

Captain Nelson shook his head. “Not yet.”

It took us a long time to get up anywhere near, but the spout remained very nearly stationary, and there was considerable white water raised about it. The light breeze, nearly dead ahead, died out, and we wallowed there for a quarter of an hour, in a flat calm. But we were near enough to see what was going on, and I watched through my glass. There were two whales instead of one, very different in size. The smaller of the two seemed to be the centre of the commotion, and I caught several glimpses of bodies, gleaming brightly as they broke the surface for an instant. There must have been five or six of them, but I could not tell certainly whether they were sharks or swordfish or what. I had never seen a killer. The larger whale was making short, savage dashes at the attacking fish, but without any marked result, so far as I could see.

I handed the glass to Captain Coffin. “Won’t you look, sir, and tell me what they are?”

“I don’t really need the glass, boy,” he said, “to tell me that they’re sharks.” But he took it, and held it to his eyes. “Sharks; big devils, twenty-five or thirty feet long. That whale’s a small cow, and she must have a small calf under her fin. That’s what the sharks are after, and they ’ll get it, too, if we don’t get a breeze pretty quick.”

Small difference it could make to the whale what got it! They were still keeping up the fight vigorously when a cooler breath came out of the southeast. It was only a puff, but soon there was another, which lasted longer; and before many minutes the breath of cooler air was steady, and growing stronger. We were just on the northern edge of the southeast trades, and had edged into them, or they had passed us, which amounted to the same thing. Captain Nelson had been edging to the southward for some days, with just that in view.

We gathered way again, and when we had got near enough, Captain Nelson ordered Mr. Baker and Mr. Brown to lower. The order he gave, however, reduced Mr. Baker to a stupefied silence.

“I don’t want you should hurt the whales,” he said quietly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a whaler not to want to hurt whales. “Drive off those sharks, and kill them if you can. I’m going to try to keep those spouts in sight,” he went on, probably thinking that some explanation was necessary, or his mates might think he was losing his mind. “I’m going to keep those spouts in sight, and see if they don’t lead us to something worth while.” And he turned away, muttering that it should be hereabouts if it was anywhere.

We lowered, and pulled hard for the scene of combat. It was full time, for the cow was bitten and torn in many places, and could not have kept up the fight much longer. The larger whale—a bull, I thought—seemed about ready to give it up, and take himself off. There were six of the big sharks, but one of them was so badly hurt by one of the whales that he could barely drag himself off, and all of them had been marked. The insensibility of sharks to pain or injury is an extraordinary thing. This one had been cut nearly in two, but he had kept up the fight, his viscera trailing behind him in a long festoon, until one of the others had relieved him of them. The other sharks did not molest him further, being too intent on getting the more delicate morsel, which we could see by the side of its mother. Nearly the whole of one side of its flukes had been bitten off, and it was somewhat torn in several places, although not seriously injured.

We put the sharks to flight, killing three, after one of them, in his thrashings, had got his tail into the boat, and wiped me across the cheek. It was like a wipe with a rasp, or coarse sandpaper, and took the outer skin completely off my right cheek. It was a long time in healing, and I had to be at my duties for nearly a month, with half my head tied up as if I had the toothache.

The whales were going, swimming slowly, probably because of the injuries to the cow, and to the reduced speed of the calf, owing to the loss of one fluke. The bull was at some distance, but he seemed to regulate his speed by that of the cow. We got back to the ship, one side of my face a mass of blood, and blood which had dripped into my shirt. I must have been a frightful-looking object. Such a hurt makes a great show, and always looks much worse than it is. I do not remember that I felt anything more than the inconvenience of it, and of having my head tied up for so long. Nobody thought it necessary to put anything on it—iodine or alcohol, or anything of the kind. I drew a bucket of sea-water, and washed most of the blood off, but that was all.

We stood off at once after the whales. Fortunately, they did not swim directly to windward, and the ship was able to make the course, and to keep up with them. They seemed to be making for some definite place, and at nightfall we were not far behind them. Even Mr. Baker appeared to think that the old man knew what he was about. We reduced sail for the night, although it could have been no better than a guess on Captain Nelson’s part how far he should reduce speed. With the first gleam of light—a little before six o’clock, or four bells, for we were not many degrees south of the equator—our best men were sent to the mastheads. Our best lookout was the Admiral, a Kanaka. There were no spouts to be seen. We had lost the whales. Sail was crowded on, and the Clearchus was soon making good speed under the steady trades, which had grown much stronger since the day before.

We held on the course on which we had been sailing for nearly three hours. Then the Admiral’s quavering cry came down to us, for he was the first to see it.

“Ah bl-o-o-ows!”

It was a musical cry, but given with indifference. He had seen too many spouts to become excited over two and a half; for he had detected the little spout of the calf, close alongside its mother. There was no doubt that there was our quarry, although still miles away. We kept on after them, and continued to gain slowly, for another hour, the officers keeping an eye on the spouts, which we could now see from the deck, and occasionally glancing up at the Admiral. We had had breakfast, and I was doing the same thing as the officers, from my perch on the heel of the bowsprit. Suddenly I saw the Admiral straighten up. He looked far out ahead as if he could not believe his eyes. Then he gave an excited cry.

“Bl-o-ws! Ah bl-o-ws!” It was not as musical as we were used to hear from the Admiral. “Blows! Big school! Hunnud whale! All over!” And he waved his arm to include a wide arc.

I could not see the new spouts, of course, from my place on deck, and I sprang into the fore rigging, clasping my old glass, which I had brought up with me after breakfast. Many others of the men swarmed up, but I was first, and I went rapidly up as far as I could get, and put the glass to my eyes.

I did not see them at first, for it was about four bells—ten o’clock in the forenoon—I was looking to the eastward, directly into the glare, and I was expecting to see them nearer than they were; but at last I saw them. There were many spouts in the air at once over a wide arc of the sea; and the sun shining on them all, and glorifying them into tiny ostrich plumes, each on Ann McKim’s hat.

Every time that I saw a sperm whale’s spout with the sun shining upon it, I thought of that hat of Ann McKim. Ann McKim was a few months older than I—she is yet, although that fact is not generally published—and when I left home she had just got her first plumed hat. It was a big, broad-brimmed hat of dark blue satin—or velvet, I do not know which—with a generous white ostrich plume sticking up from the brim at just the angle of a sperm whale’s spout. I know she had bought it with her own money, and had trimmed it herself, for she told me so. No doubt such a hat was absurd, especially on a girl of fifteen, but it did not seem absurd to her, nor to me when I saw her with it on, the Sunday before I came away. But Ann McKim was sweet and lovely, and she would have lent beauty to any hat she chose to wear.

The large school of whales did not seem to be going anywhere in particular as a body, although the individuals of the school continually moved about, or sounded, or came up again. They may have been feeding. The bull and the wounded cow and calf which we had been chasing were evidently meaning to join the school, and we followed them, getting all the boats ready for lowering as we went. We were now getting the full sweep of the trades, steady and strong, and we gained on the three whales, so that we were in a position to see well what happened when they neared the school.

A big bull swam out from the school to inspect the newcomers. He was not old and scarred, as most of the lone whales were, but as big as any of them, and in his prime. Although we were not far off, that means perhaps half a mile; and as but little of the whales was out of water, I could not see with any certainty what went on. The big bull at once joined the cow, and swam beside her for some distance, apparently trying to persuade her to leave her lord and come with him; an unnecessary proceeding, as that was just what she was doing. He seemed to pay no attention to the calf. It was no concern of his. The cow swam on, and took no notice of him, so far as I could see, but the other bull did not like it. He was not so very much smaller than the big one, and before I realized that there was anything on the programme, here he was, coming for the big bull, fire in his eye, I could imagine, and jaw dropped. When he was a hundred feet away, he turned over, nearly on his back, apparently, for I saw his jaw projecting above the surface of the water.

The big bull was aware of the other just in time to slip out of the way, but not in time to escape entirely. The jaw closed on his small, and I saw the wounds made by the teeth, which tore out great pieces of blubber and flesh. By what seemed agreement, the two big whales turned about as soon as they could and went at each other full tilt. Their jaws locked, and they wrestled there for a minute, each seeming to try to break the jaw of the other, and tearing and thrashing the water into boiling fountains of spray. As we found out later, great gobs of flesh were torn from the sides of their heads. After a while they broke their hold, I could not see how, and they backed off and went at it again.

This time the fight was fiercer than before, and it was impossible to see what was happening, or to see anything but white water. This round was a little longer than the first. The performance was repeated two or three times, and then I saw the boiling white water gradually become quiet. The two great bodies lay there for a few seconds, head to head; then the smaller of the whales moved off slowly away from the school. He seemed to have lost all interest in the cow, and the bigger one, satisfied that the other had definitely given up the fight, let him go in peace. Both whales seemed to be in distress. I saw the big one, as he swam to join the school, raise his head completely out of water two or three times, and his jaw seemed to be slewed around so that it would not close properly. He had difficulty in moving it at all.

Up to this point it had not seemed to be a propitious time for lowering, but when the fight was over, Mr. Tilton lowered at once, and went after the vanquished bull. He was still moving slowly, and the boat easily overtook him, and got fast. He made no fight at all, but lay fin out in fifteen minutes. His jaw was hanging down queerly, and when we got him alongside and began to cut-in, we found that it had been broken short off, and was hanging by the flesh. Many of his teeth were stove out, and he had terrible wounds in the head.

Meanwhile the ship had kept off after the school, which began to show signs of moving along. We got pretty near it, however, and lowered three more boats, but we did not succeed in getting whales of any size. The school consisted principally of rather small cows, under the charge of two or three bulls as schoolmasters. We could not find the bull which had been fighting, and did not look for the others, for schoolmasters are always pugnacious devils. They have to be. We managed to get three small cows of about twenty barrels apiece before the school was well under way and left us. One of these cows was lost during the night, stripped by sharks and broken adrift, and much of another fell a prey to the sharks. Four whales at once alongside is almost too much to take care of. We got the blubber all hove in by sunset of the next day, and the carcasses cut adrift. They made only a hundred and twelve barrels altogether, only about as much as we might have expected to get from one really big whale in those waters.