William John Hopkins

“ Tilton’s boat, sounded his falsetto cry from the foremasthead. It was early in the forenoon, and I was busy below; but I heard the quick patter of feet on deck, and I knew what it meant. So I dropped every­thing just where I stood, and ran up. I happened to see the spout at once, a beautiful, light, feathery thing in the bright sunlight, more like the drooping ostrich plume than ever. There was but the one spout, repeated lazily at intervals, although the others of the pod, if there were others, might have sounded, and be feeding. ”

“ The projecting snout of the shark is the one sensitive place in his whole body. The struggles of this shark were terrific. He thrashed the water with his tail, sending up sheets of spray which drenched Hall and Miller on the cutting-stage; then the sea receded, and his tail thrashed the bare blubber with noises like explosions. The crew quickly gathered at the rail, laughing at Hall and Miller, and at the struggles of the shark. But his struggles were not fruitless, for they freed the spades from the body of the whale, and the shark slipped back into the sea. ”

“ When you are at anchor in harbor, and the darkness makes outlines dim, it is not difficult to imagine that Zanzibar is New Bedford—or that any place is any other place, as long as it has a harbor and a water front; especially if that other place shines like a star in your memory. I have got much pleasure, all my life, from giving my imagination free rein. It is a harmless diversion. I was doing so then, standing without motion by the main rigging, and I must have been but one of the shadows of rigging, and coils of rope hanging from belaying pins, and davits. ”

“ I heard quiet stirrings on the cabin ladder and down the booby-hatch, and I knew that the mates and boatsteerers would be on hand in a few seconds; and noises in the cabin told me that Captain Nelson would not be far behind. Mr. Snow’s attention had at last been attracted by a movement behind the mainmast—the man there was so scared that he could not keep still—and he raised his rifle. It was like shooting point-blank at the side of a barn. He might easily hit the man, who had not sense enough to keep behind the mast, but kept popping out. ”

“ Captain Nelson was going over for a “gam.” Now a gam is nothing more nor less than a gossip: each gives the other what news he has, the gossip of home from the outbound captain, and from the inbound the gossip of whales and their ways, and news of whalers and captains that he has met, the number of barrels of oil that the George and Susan has taken, the accident to the Addison, the men that the Gosnold lost by a fighting whale on the Carroll grounds, and any other items of interest that he can remember. ”

“ I revelled in the breeze, in the sight of the marching, sunny sea, in the way the ship cut cleanly through the seas, keeping her bows wet with spray, in the crisp commands and the way the men responded to them, in the noises of a ship and the sound of the water, and in the silence. Now and then I lifted my eyes to the towering pyramid of canvas, and I could not help echoing the thought of the sailor quoted by Dana: “How quietly they do their work!”
Captain Marshall was on deck nearly all day, pacing the deck by the weather rail, but I did not hear him give an order. He scarcely spoke. ”

“ We were not far from the whales, and no respectable whale could avoid hearing that noise of wood on wood, like beating a great tom-tom. They cocked up their ears for an instant, but the oars were still rolling about, Silver frantically grabbing at them, and the whales simultaneously raised their flukes high, and went down. Mr. Baker, on the other side of Mr. Snow, launched a string of curses at Mr. Snow’s boat for his carelessness, for he had been on the point of signalling Starbuck to stand up, he was so near his whale. Mr. Snow, in turn, cursed Silver up and down. ”

“ Brown’s boat was not completely hauled in, and there were some fathoms still hanging down from the bow. The whale caught this frayed end between his jaws as he passed, and worried it as a terrier does a string. The effect was the same as if it had still been fast to the iron in his body. The line tautened instantly, and whirled the bow around, and then, as no attention was being given to the loggerhead end of a frayed line with a few fathoms over the bow, it began to snake out of its tub. ”

“ Where we were, the wind was nothing more than a light, variable air, mostly from the southwest; but the Battles was bringing with her a brisk breeze from the southeast. I ran below to get my glass—that load of junk—and hung it about my neck. When I got on deck again the Battles seemed to be hesitating, coming up slowly into the wind, her topsails shaking and her booms evidently swinging. It was as if she no longer felt the directing hand of any man; as if there was nobody at the helm, or she had lost her rudder. I thought it queer behavior, and so did Captain Nelson. ”

“ It made me think of the terns fishing off Ricketson’s Point in Padanaram: tacking slowly, beating to windward, the eyes above the coral-red bill, like a man at the masthead, keeping a bright lookout for fish; then coming down swiftly with the wind to the leeward side of their cruising ground to begin once more their slow beating against the wind. In just this way, when the ship has reached the windward edge of her cruising ground, she wears around, and comes down before it, to repeat the process until the old man has tired of it. ”

“ Altogether, the Annie Battles would have been called at once powerful and able. That was the term that sprang at once to a sailor’s lips—an able boat, a very able boat. I heard it from many, and it was the first thing they said. I cannot think of any form of praise that I would rather have had if I had been her designer; it means so much, speed, seaworthiness, ability to carry sail with safety. It must have given Coffin, master, a great deal of sheer pleasure merely to contemplate his vessel, there was that beauty in her. ”

“ Brown a chance, and pushed us fast astern. It was a delicate job for the Prince to hold us straight with the steering oar, and not to let the boat swing around broadside, but for a boat length he did it. Mr. Brown, during that time, was pushing with all his strength on the harpoon, the sharp point against the whale’s rubber-like snout, but the barb did not enter. We heard and saw the whale’s jaw snap up twice, but of course it did not reach the boat. He spouted, sending the acrid vapor, thinly mixed with blood, over us, setting us all to choking, and almost turning me inside out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not unlikely that the man felt what was passing in my mind, much as a dog feels such things. With a dog there is no need for acts, or even for a change of the expression of your face. He feels what is passing in your mind; smells it, perhaps. This knife-thrower, who threw a knife almost too well to suit Peter’s fastidious temper, had been looking me over, much as I had been appraising him, each of us after his manner. Now he smiled faintly and disdainfully—perhaps he had had many such experiences—and looked away at our boat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So these boats, glistening in their coats of fresh paint, were put on the after house, and covered with an old sail to keep them from blistering in the hot sun.
Peter had been saying nothing, but pottering pleasantly about his pleasant work, a half-smile on his leathery face. There was a fascination for me in watching Peter, and I had said nothing either. There is always a fascination in watching a thoroughgoing workman, but especially a boatbuilder or a shipbuilder or a blacksmith; a real smith, not merely a shoer of horses. ”

“ 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 lay for a long time in the darkness, listening to the breathing of the men in the other bunks, and seeing, before the eye of the mind, the ooze from those seams grow into light amber-colored drops. Then I thought of the multitude of barrels that would make up our full cargo—twenty-four hundred of them—and from each cask an ooze of oil that grew imperceptibly into a drop. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The heel of the bowsprit was my favorite place, but on our present point of sailing that was fairly in the sun until the afternoon was half gone, even with the staysails out to starboard; and nobody—no white man—could bear the sun beating down upon him long with any comfort. I could stand the smell of the ship, which blew over me as I lay there. Indeed, I liked the smell of the ship. It was chiefly of oil and tar and rope and general hotness, and it brought back vividly to my mind the wharves of New Bedford on a summer noon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She was a beautiful sight as she passed to windward under her cloud of canvas, making a good sixteen knots, bowing slowly and gracefully, and shouldering the seas out of her way, smothered in foam to her knightheads. There is nothing so beautiful as a full-rigged clipper ship with all her towering spread of sail, and with as much wind as she can stagger under. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This duty of the boatsteerer is unpleasant enough at best, but when the sea is rough I have seen a man almost drowned by the water which continually swept over him. Under such conditions the enormous hook is jerked and swayed by the roll of the ship; and he has to be constantly on the lookout that the heave of the ship and the heave of the whale, which usually will not be in the same direction at any instant, do not catch him between them.
Two men were at the gangway, to steer the sheet of blubber—called the blanket piece—as it came up, and twenty men at the windlass. ”

“ Much of the rigging of silk thread is rotten and brittle, and breaks at a touch; but the rest of Peter’s handiwork is of more enduring stuff, although yellow with age. It makes me positively homesick to see the very decks that I trod, the wheel under its roof and the rail at the stern upon which I had leaned so many times, looking over the sluggish wake, the gangway with the cutting-stage in place, the great blocks of the cutting-tackles, the try-works with the bench against its after side ”

“ The darkest night is not nearly so bad. That gray loneliness of early dawn is an equally fitting time to choose for going insane, and Mr. Snow seemed to have chosen it for that purpose. He was standing in the same spot that Captain Nelson occupied when he dropped Smith from the yard, and was living over that experience, with himself in the captain’s place. A Spencer was in his right hand, the barrel in the hollow of his left arm, and a long, sharp lance leaned against the after house. ”