Frank Thomas Bullen

“ Oh, the heat; as if one’s head were a focus for the sun himself, since there is little else for many leagues exposed for him to assail except the mirror-like ocean. Thence, too, the heat rises as if to place us between two fires, until we feel like the fakirs of India undergoing their self-imposed penance of the swing. How fervently thankful we are when at last the glorious orb descends so low that his slanting rays lose their power in great measure, and permit us again to take a reviving interest in our surroundings. ”

“ At the time we so rashly attacked the whale the mighty mollusc must have been in his death-throes, for immediately after our boat’s disappearance the whale ‘sounded.’ When, a minute or two later, he rose again to the surface, the other boats’ crews saw him busily turning over and over, as if collecting the scattered fragments of his late victim. At that time they had not noticed me among the various flotsam, but it must have been then that I vanished down the capacious gullet of the voracious cetacean. ”

“ She is put about, making a course which shortly brings her a mile or two to windward of the slowly-moving cachalot. Now it is evident that no solitary whale is in sight, but a great school, gambolling in the bright spray. One occasionally, in pure exuberance of its tremendous vitality, springs twenty feet into the clear air, and falls, a hundred tons of massive flesh, with earthquake-like commotion, back into the sea.
Having got the weather-gage, the boats are lowered; sail is immediately set, and, like swift huge-winged birds, they swoop down upon the prey. ”

“ Around it are playing in shoals fish of many kinds seen only in deep waters—fish of every luminous tint that can be imagined, and ranging in size from the lordly albacore, weighing a quarter of a ton, to the tiny caranx of a couple of inches long. But hush! there is a priceless freshness in the air. The weary day is shaking off the fervent embrace of her exhaustless bridegroom. Gentle, lovely shades of colour are replacing the intense glow. A little, little breeze creeps cautiously along, ruffling the grateful sea in patches of purple shadow. ”

“ Many thousands in number, glistening in the sunblaze like burnished silver, they glide through the air with incredible speed, the whole shoal rising and falling in wave-like undulations as if in the performance of preconcerted evolutions. They have been flying upon a plane of perhaps twenty feet above the sea for some five hundred yards, and are just about to re-enter the water, when beneath them appear the iridescent beauties of a school of dolphin (not the dull-hued mammal, but the poet-beloved fish) . ”

“ The noise of falling spars, the dull crashing blows of the sea, and the melancholy wailing of the wind were still so deafening that he was able as yet to console himself with the thought that puny human cries would be inaudible. But at last his suspense grew unbearable, and dropping into the water, which was well above his waist, he struggled on deck, to find himself sole representative of the crew, and the vessel derelict. ”

“ A general favourite among seamen is the Cape pigeon, a pretty, busy little sea-bird about the size of a dove, but plumper, with a black head and an elaborate pattern in black and grey upon the white of its open wings. Around the stern of any passing ship large numbers of these fluttering visitors hover continually, their shrill cries and unwearying manœuvres contrasting pleasantly with the deep monotone made by the driving keel through the foaming sea. In common with most Southern sea-birds having hooked beaks, they are easily caught with hook and line, but will not live in captivity. ”

“ Amid tremendous turmoil of seething waters, arms innumerable, like a nest of mighty serpents, arose from the deep, followed at last by a horrible head, of a bigness and diabolical appearance unspeakably appalling. Fascinated by the terrible eyes that, large as shields, glared upon them, the awe-stricken seamen beheld some of the far-reaching tentacles, covered with multitudes of mouths, embracing their vessel, while others searched her alow and aloft, culling the trembling men from the rigging like ripe fruit, and conveying them forthwith into an abysmal mouth where they vanished for ever. ”

“ A shark’s eyes as he turns sideways under your vessel’s counter and looks up to see if any one is coming are ghastly, green, and cruel; but this thing’s eyes were all these and much more. I felt that the Book of Revelation was incomplete without him, and his gaze haunts me yet. Although quite sick and giddy at the sight of such a bogey, I could not move until the awful thing, suddenly waving what seemed like mighty wings, soared up out of the water soundlessly to a height of about six feet, falling again with a thunderous splash that might have been heard for miles. ”

“ The contrast between the livid whiteness of the mollusc’s body and the massive blackness of the whale,—the convulsive writhing of the tremendous arms, as, like a Medusa’s head magnified a thousand times, they wound and gripped about the columnar head of the great mammal,—made a picture unequalled in all the animal world for intense interest. The immense eyes, at least a foot in diameter, glared out of the dead white of the head, inky black, appalling in their fixity of gaze. ”

“ Fiercer and louder howled the gale, while the bewildered sea, irresistibly borne north-eastward by the current and scourged southward by the ever-increasing storm, rose in pyramidal heaps which fell all ways, only their blinding spray flying steadfastly to leeward. In that welter of conflicting elements, whence even the birds had fled, we were tossed like any other bubble of the myriads bursting around. Sail was useless to steady her, for the towering billows becalmed it; neither dared we risk our only canvas blowing away. ”

“ Scourged by the merciless blast, battered by the threshing sails, they strove for dear life through two terrible hours of that stern night. A feeble cry was heard,—a faint splash. Only a man dropped from the main top-gallant yard,—through one hundred and twenty feet of darkness into the yeasty smother beneath, and ere the news reached the deck, calm and peaceful below the tumult, more than a mile astern, swallowed by the ever-unsatisfied maw of the ravening sea. And onward like a meteor sped the flying ship, “running her Easting down.” ”

“ The shapeless bulk of the cachalot makes it a difficult tow at all times, but, with a rising wind and sea, utterly impossible to whale-boats. The barometer is falling; great masses of purple-edged cumuli are piling high on the southern horizon, and no weather prophet is needed to foretell the imminent approach of a heavy gale. The captain looks wistfully to windward at Preservation Inlet, only twenty-five miles off, and thinks, with fierce discontent, of the prize, worth eight or nine hundred pounds, which lies but four or five miles away, and must be abandoned solely for want of steam-power. ”

“ So they roam the teeming seas in the enviable, as well as almost unique, position among the marine fauna of exemption from death, except by sickness or old age, as much as any sedate, law-abiding citizen of London. They seem to be well aware of their privileges, for they draw near the ship with perfect confidence, heeding her huge shadow no more than if she were a mass of rock rising sheer from the ocean-bed, and incapable of harm to any of the sea-folk. ”