There was no impatience of action aboard the Viking: the harpoon might even then have been fast in the whale’s back, but the captain had coolly withheld his stroke until the opportunity should be precisely what he sought. And this display of patience after a fruitless chase of fifteen hours! Billy Topsail gasped his disappointment. But the captain laughed.
“I get him yet,” he said. “Soon, now,” after a look at sea and darkening sky.
CHAPTER XX
The Mate of the Fin-Back Whale Rises for the Last Time, With a Blood-Red Sunset Beyond, and Billy Topsail Says, “Too bad!”
Half a mile ahead the whales rose. The Viking crept near without giving alarm, and waited for them to dive and rise again. The warning swish and hon-g-k sounded next from off the port bow. There was a shout from the crew. The school lay close in, headed away; they were splashing and blissfully hon-g-king—and the Viking not fifty yards distant. She was upon them from behind before they had well drawn breath. Steam was shut off. The captain’s eye was at the butt of the gun, and his hand was on the trigger. The boat crept nearer—so near that Billy Topsail could have leaped from the bow to the back of the young whale; and she was fast losing way.
But it was not the young whale that the captain wanted. He held his fire. Down went the young one. Down went the bull whale. But had he arched his back? The old female wallowed a moment longer and dived with arched back. She barely escaped the Viking’s bows and might have been mortally harpooned with ease. But it was not the female that the captain wanted. It was the big male. There was not a whale in sight. Still the captain kept his eye at the butt of the gun and his hand on the trigger.
A moment later—the steamer was slipping along very slowly—the water ahead was disturbed. The back of the bull whale appeared. A stream of water shot into the air and broke like a fountain. The Viking kept pace—gained; momentarily creeping nearer, until the range was but ten yards. Then the whale, as though taking alarm, arched his back; and—
Bang!
The puff of smoke drifted away. Billy Topsail caught sight of the harpoon, sunk to the hilt in the whale’s side. Then the waters closed over the wounded beast.
“Ha!” cried the captain, jumping from the platform, and strutting about with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. “Did you see me? Ha! It is over!”
A cheer broke from the crew. The men ran forward to their stations at the winch.
“Ha!” the captain repeated with intense satisfaction, his ruddy face wreathed in smiles. “Did you see me? Ha-a-a-a! It is a dead w’ale.”
The harpoon line was paying out slowly, controlled by a big steam winch—a gigantic fishing reel. The engines were stopped; but the Viking was going forward at a lively rate as the catch plunged down and on. Minute after minute slipped away—five minutes; then the rope slackened somewhat, and, a moment later, the big whale came to the surface and spouted streams of blood—streams as red as the streak of sunset light in the gray sky beyond him. He floundered there in agony, blowing and hon-g-king and beating the sea with his tail: turning the water crimson with his blood.
It took him a long, long time to die, frightfully torn by the bomb though he was. He dived and rose and coughed; and at last he sank slowly down, down, and still down; drawing out a hundred and forty fathom of line: straight down to the bottom of the sea in that place. From time to time the captain touched the rope with his fingers; and when the tremour of life had passed from it he gave the signal to haul away. Half an hour later the carcass of the monster was inflated with gas, lying belly up at the surface of the water, and lashed by the tail to the port bow of the steamer.
Off the starboard quarter—far away where the dusk had gathered—the mate of the dead whale rose, hon-g-ked, dived and was seen no more.
“Too bad!” muttered Billy Topsail.
CHAPTER XXI
In Which Billy Topsail Goes Fishing in Earnest. Concerning, also, Feather’s Folly of the Devil’s Teeth, Mary Robinson, and the Wreck of the Fish Killer
Feather’s Folly was one of a group of troublesome islands lying off Cape Grief on the way to the Labrador. Surveyed by a generously inaccurate apprentice it might have measured an acre. It was as barren as an old bone; but a painstaking man, with unimpaired eyesight, if he lingered long and lovingly enough over the task, could doubtless have discovered more than one blade of grass. There is no adjective in the English language adequate to describe its forbidding appearance as viewed from the sea in a gale of wind.
On the chart it was a mere dot—a nameless rock, the outermost of a group most happily called the Devil’s Teeth. To the Labrador fishermen, bound north from Newfoundland in the spring, bound south, with their loads of green cod, in the fall, it was the Cocked Hat. This name, too, is aptly descriptive; many a schooner, caught in the breakers, had, as the old proverb hath it, been knocked into that condition, or worse. But to the folk of the immediate coast, and especially of Hulk’s Harbour, which lies within sight on the mainland, it was for long known as Feather’s Folly.
Old Bill Feather had once been wrecked on the Cocked Hat. The little Lucky Lass, bound to Hulk’s Harbour from the Hen-and-Chickens, and sunk to the scupper-holes with green fish, had struck in a fog. Four minutes later she had gone down with all hands save Bill. An absentminded breaker had deposited him high and dry on a ledge of the northeast cliff; needless to say, it was much to Bill’s surprise. For five days the castaway had shivered and starved on the barren rock. This was within sight of the chimney-smoke of home—of the harbour tickle, of the cottage roofs; even, in clear weather, of the flakes and stage of his own place.
“It won’t happen again,” vowed Bill, when they took his lean, sore hulk home.
What Bill did—what he planned and accomplished in the face of ridicule and adverse fortune—earned the rock the name of Feather’s Folly in that neighbourhood.
“Anyhow,” old Bill was in the habit of repeating, to defend himself, “I ’low it won’t happen again. An’ I’ll see that it don’t!”
But season followed season, without event; and the Cocked Hat was still known as Feather’s Folly.
Billy Topsail was to learn this.
It was early in the spring of the year—too early by half, the old salts said, for Labrador craft to put out from the Newfoundland ports. Thick, vagrant fogs, drifting with the variable winds, were abroad on all the coast; and the Arctic current was spread with drift ice from the upper shores and with great bergs from the glaciers of the far north. But Skipper Libe Tussel, of the thirty-ton Fish Killer, hailing from Ruddy Cove, was a firm believer in the fortunes of the early bird; moreover, he was determined that the skipper of the Cod Trap, hailing from Fortune, should not this season preëmpt his trap-berth on the Thigh Bone fishing grounds. So the Fish Killer was underway for the north, early as it was; and she was cheerily game to face the chances of wind and ice, if only she might beat the Cod Trap to the favourable opportunities of the Thigh Bone grounds off Indian Harbour.
“It’s thick,” Robinson remarked to the skipper.
“‘Tis thick.”
Billy Topsail, now grown old enough for the adventurous voyage to the Labrador coast, was aboard; and he listened to this exchange with a deal of interest. It was his first fishing voyage; he had been north in the Rescue, to be sure, but that was no more than a cruise, undertaken to relieve the starving fishermen of the upper harbours. At last, he was fishing in earnest—really aboard the Fish Killer, bound north, there to fish the summer through, in all sorts of weather, with a share in the catch at the end of it! He was vastly delighted by this: for ’twas a man’s work he was about, and ’twas a man’s work he was wanting to do.
“Thick as mud,” said Robinson, with a little shiver.
“’S mud,” the skipper responded, in laconic agreement.
And it was thick! The fog had settled at mid-day. A fearsome array of icebergs had then been in sight, and the low coast, with the snow still upon it, had to leeward shone in the brilliant sunlight. Bu
t now, with the afternoon not yet on the wane, the day had turned murky and damp. A bank of black fog had drifted in from the open sea. Ice and shore had disappeared. The limit of vision approached, possibly, but did not attain, twenty-five yards. The weather was thick, indeed; the schooner seemed to be winging along through a boundless cloud; and there was a smart breeze blowing, and the circle of sea, in the exact centre of which the schooner floated, was choppy and black.
“Thick enough,” Skipper Libe echoed, thoughtfully. “But,” he added, “you wouldn’t advise heavin’ to, would you?”
“No, no!” Robinson exclaimed. “I’m too anxious to get to Indian Harbour.”
“And I,” muttered the skipper, with an anxious look ahead, “to make the Thigh Bone grounds. But—”
“Give her all the wind she’ll carry,” said Robinson. “It won’t bother me.”
“I thinks,” the skipper continued, ignoring the interruption, “that I’ll shorten sail. For,” said he, “I’m thinkin’ the old girl might bleed at the nose if she happened t’ bump a berg.”
While the crew reduced the canvas, Robinson went below. He was the Hudson’s Bay Company’s agent at Dog Arm of the Labrador, which is close to Indian Harbour. In January, with his invalid daughter in a dog-sled, he had journeyed from that far place to Desolate Bay of Newfoundland, and thence by train to St. John’s. It had been a toilsome, dangerous, incredibly bitter experience. But he had forgotten that, nor had he ever complained of it; his happiness was that his child had survived the surgeons’ operation, had profited in ease and hope, had already been restored near to her old sunny health. Early in the spring, word of the proposed sailing of the Fish Killer from Ruddy Cove had come to him at St. John’s; and he had taken passage with Skipper Libe, no more, it must be said, because he wished Mary’s mother to know the good news (she had had no word since his departure) than because he was breathlessly impatient once more to be serving the company’s interests at Dog Arm.
To Mary and her father Skipper Libe had with seamanlike courtesy abandoned the tiny cabin. The child was lying in the skipper’s own berth—warmly covered, comfortably tucked in, provided with a book to read by the light of the swinging lamp.
“Are you happy, dear?” her father asked.
“Oh, yes!”
The man took the child’s hand. “I’m sometimes sorry,” he said, “that we didn’t wait for the mail-boat. The Fish Killer is a pretty tough craft for a little girl to be aboard.”
“Sorry?” was the instant response, made with a little smile. “I’m not. I’m glad. Isn’t Cape Grief close to leeward? Well, then, father, we’re half way home. Think of it! We’re—half—way—home!”
The father laughed.
“And we might have been waiting at St. John’s,” the child continued, her blue eyes shining. “Oh, father, I’d rather be aboard the Fish Killer off Grief Head than in the very best room of the Crosbie Hotel. Half way home!” she repeated. “Half way home!”
“Half way is a long way.”
“But it’s half way!”
“On this coast,” the father sighed, “no man is home until he gets there.”
“It’s a fair wind.”
“And the fog as thick as mud.”
“But they’ve reefed the mains’l; they’ve stowed the stays’l; they’ve got the tops’l down. Haven’t you heard them? I’ve been listening—”
“What’s that!” Robinson cried.
It was a mere ejaculation of terror. He had no need to ask the question. Even Mary knew well enough what had happened. The Fish Killer had struck an iceberg bow on. The shock; the crash forward; the clatter of a falling topmast; the cries on deck: these things were alive with the fearful information.
CHAPTER XXII
The Crew of the Fish Killer Finds Refuge on an Iceberg, and Discovers Greater Safety Elsewhere, after Which the Cook is Mistaken for a Fool, but puts the Crew to Shame
Robinson caught the child from the berth. He paused—it was an instinct born of Labrador experience—to wrap a blanket about her, though she was clothed for the day. She reminded him quietly that she would catch cold without her cap; and this he snatched in passing. Then he was on deck—in the midst of a litter from aloft and of a vast confusion of terrified cries.
Before she struck, the Fish Killer had ascended a gently shelving beach of ice, washed smooth by the sea. There she hung precariously. Her stem was low, so low that the choppy sea came aboard and swamped the cabin; and the bow was high on the ice. Her bowsprit was in splinters, her topmast on deck, her spliced mainmast tottering; she was the bedraggled wreck of a craft.
Beyond, the berg towered into the fog, stretched into the fog; only a broken wall of blue-white ice was visible. The butt of the bowsprit overhung a wide ledge. To scramble to the shattered extremity, to hang by the hands, to drop to safe foothold: this would all have been easy for children. The impulse was to seek the solid berg in haste before the schooner had time to fall away and sink.
Robinson ran forward.
“Got that kid?” Skipper Libe demanded. “Ah, you has! Billy Topsail!” he roared.
Billy answered.
“Get ashore on that ice!” the skipper ordered.
Billy ran out on the broken bowsprit and dropped to the berg. He looked back expectantly.
“Take the kid!”
A push sent Robinson on the same road. He dropped Mary into Billy’s waiting arms. Then he, too, looked back for orders.
“Ashore with you!”
Robinson swung by the hands and dropped. Before he let go his hands he had felt the vessel quiver and begin to recede from her position.
“Now, men,” said the skipper, “grub! She’ll be off in a minute.”
Every man of them leaped willingly to the imperative duty. The food was in the forecastle and hold; they disappeared. Skipper Libe kept watch on deck. With the waves restless beneath her stern, the schooner was perilously insecure. She was gradually working her way back to the sea. The briefest glance below had already assured Skipper Libe that her timbers were hopelessly sprung.
She was old—rotten with age and hard service. The water was pouring in forward and amidships; it ran aft in a flood, contributing its weight to the vessel’s inclination to slip away from the berg. It was slow in the beginning, this retreat; but through every moment the movement was accelerated. Five minutes—four—three: in a space too brief to be counted upon she would be wallowing in the sea.
“Haste!” the skipper screamed.
Waiting was out of the question. The Fish Killer was about to drop into the sea. Though the men had but tumbled into the forecastle—though as yet they had had no time to seize the food of which tomorrow would find them in desperate need—the skipper roared the order to return.
“Ashore! Ashore!” he shouted.
They came back more willingly, more expeditiously, than they had gone; and they came back empty-handed. Not a man among them had so much as a single biscuit.
“Jim!” said the skipper.
With that, Jim Tall, the cook, clambered out on the bowsprit. The others of the crew waited, each with an anxious eye upon the skipper.
“Bill!”
No sooner was Jim Tall at the end of the bowsprit than Bill was underway. The skipper grimly watched his terrified progress.
“Jack!”
In turn, Jack Sop scrambled out and dropped to the berg. The schooner was fast receding from the ledge. Alexander Budge, John Swan, Archibald Mann, completing the fishing crew, with the exception of Tom Watt, the first hand, and the skipper, won the ice.
“Now, Tom!” said the skipper.
“You, sir!”
“Tom!” Skipper Libe roared; and you may be sure that Tom Watt waited no longer.
Only the skipper was left. The change from his passive attitude—from his unbending, reposeful attitude, with a hand carelessly laid on the windlass—was so sudden and unequivocal that Jim Tall, the cook, who was ever the wag of the crew, startled even himself
with laughter. It was instant. Skipper Libe in a flash turned from a petrified man into a terrified and marvellously agile monkey. He bounded for the bowsprit, nimbly ran the broken length of it, and there stood swaying. The vessel was now so far from the ledge, and so fast receding, that he paused. Delay had but one issue. This was so apparent that horror tied the tongues of the crew. Not a cry of warning was uttered. The situation was too intense, too brief, for utterance.
“Tom,” said the skipper to the first hand, “catch!”
He leaped.
“Skipper,” said Tom Watt, in the uttermost confusion, an instant later, “glad t’ see you! Come in! You isn’t a minute too early.”
In this way, proceeding with admirable self-possession, the souls aboard the Fish Killer jumped from the frying-pan. Whether or not it was into the fire was not for a moment in doubt. When the schooner had once fairly reached the sea, which immediately happened, she sank. They saw her waver, slowly settle, disappear; when her topmast went tottering under water the end had come.
Whatever may be said of a frying-pan, nobody can accuse the crew of the Fish Killer of having come within reach of a fire. Aboard the berg it was cold—awfully cold. Icebergs carry an atmosphere of that sort even into the Gulf Stream; they radiate cold so effectively that the captains of steamers take warning and evade them. It was cold—very, very cold. There was nothing to temper the numbing bitterness of the situation. And what the night might bring could only be surmised.
The Sea-Story Megapack Page 22