05 Whale Adventure

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05 Whale Adventure Page 2

by Willard Price


  He went on to point out and describe all the complicated gear of the most complicated of sailing ships -lifts, clews, bunts, braces, tacks, sheets, shrouds, ratlines, rings, crosstrees, foot-ropes, buoy-ropes, wheel-ropes, belaying pins, catheads, forestays, backstays, booms, sprits, davits, and so on and on, concluding with twenty different sails, each with its own particular name.

  As he talked he kept glancing at them with a sly grin. He was having a good time at their expense. He thought they didn’t know what he was talking about. Finally he said:

  ‘There, I’ll bet you can’t remember half of what I’ve told you. What’s that sail?’

  ‘Spanker.’ The boys spoke together.

  ‘And that one?’

  ‘Gaff-topsyl.’

  ‘What’s the difference between a martingale boom and a whisker boom?’

  He got the right answer.

  He went on with a complete cross-examination. The boys made some mistakes, but thanks to their keen interest in sailing, their schooner experience, and much reading, their percentage of error was small.

  ‘Not bad,’ Durkins had to admit. Then, as if fearing that the boys might be too pleased with themselves, he went on:

  ‘But it’s one thing to name ‘em and another thing to use ‘em. Wait till you try reefing sails in a storm a hundred feet above deck - or rowing one of those little boats out and tackling a whale that can smash your craft to smithereens with one flick of his tail. Then you’ll find out what it takes to be a whaler.’

  Chapter 3

  Captain Grindle amuses himself

  Roger floated above the clouds.

  They seemed like clouds, the twenty white sails that billowed beneath him.

  He was in the ‘rings’, a sort of basket or crow’s-nest at the top of the mainmast. A hundred feet down was the deck of the Killer, but he could not see it. He could see nothing below him but the white clouds of canvas. For a while he was alone, soaring through the sky like a bird or a plane, white clouds below him and more white clouds, real ones, above.

  Not quite alone. One man shared his heaven. In the rings at the head of the foremast stood Jiggs, one of the crew. He, too, could not see the ship beneath. But he was not there to look at the ship. Both he and Roger were posted as lookouts to watch for whales.

  There they stood, only thirty feet apart, but with an impassable canyon between them. It was as if they were each perched on a mountain-top separated by a deep valley filled with cloud. The cloud ended only a few feet below them and it was easy to imagine that you could walk across this white floor from the head of the mainmast to the head of the foremast. But when you remembered that the floor was not reliable and would treacherously let you plunge to your death on the deck a hundred feet below, it made your head swim and hands grip the rail of your dizzy basket.

  Of course, it was the basket that was dizzy - Roger wouldn’t admit that he was. The basket was going round in circles. The sea was fairly smooth, but there was enough of a swell to roll the ship slightly from side to side and make it lazily heave and pitch.

  Those on deck might not notice the motion, but a movement of a few inches there was exaggerated to many feet at the masthead. So it was that Roger was spun round and round until he began to have a distinctly uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  This was his first day of whaling. The Killer had left Honolulu at dawn. After their interview with Captain Grindle the boys and Mr Scott had gone ashore for their gear. There Scott had said goodbye to his colleague, Sinclair, who had been unable to go with him on the Killer because the captain had insisted that one ‘science fellow’ was enough to bother with. Hal and Roger had said their own goodbyes to their friends on the schooner Lively Lady, on which they had sailed the far Pacific. The schooner was still under charter by the American Museum, and the skipper, Captain Ike, and the Polynesian boy, Ohio, would look after it until the return of the Killer in three weeks.

  The first night on board had not been too happy. The first surprise came at dinner-time.

  There was no dining-saloon for the crew, not even a table. The men formed in line and walked past a small window in the wall of the galley (kitchen). Through this window the cook thrust out to each man a pan of meat and beans and a chunk of hardtack (ship-biscuit).

  Then you could look for a place to sit down. Of course, there were no chairs. You might sit on the fo’c’sle head, or on a hatch cover, or on the deck itself.

  Or you could eat standing up. This was not too bad because the eating did not take long. It was not the sort of food you would linger over. You got it down as fast as possible. In five minutes it was stowed away.

  As for the hardtack, it was well named. It was so hard that the best teeth could scarcely make a dent in it, and most of the men threw their biscuits overside or tried to hit the gulls and terns that wheeled above the ship.

  Having emptied their pans the boys were about to take them back to the galley when a sailor prompted:

  ‘Clean ‘em first.’

  ‘Where’s the water?’ Hal asked.’

  ‘Water my hat!’ exclaimed the sailor. ‘What do you think this is, a bloomin’ yacht? You’ll be lucky if you get enough water to drink - there’s none to spare for washin’.’

  He pulled some rope-yarn from his pocket. It was a tangled mass almost as fluffy as absorbent cotton. He wiped his pan, then threw the sticky wad into the sea. He gave some of the yarn to the boys and they followed the same procedure. Then they returned their pans at the galley window.

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ said the sailor who had supplied them with the rope-yarn. ‘My name’s Jimson. Any time you get stuck, perhaps I can help you out.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ said Hal, and introduced himself and his brother. ‘But I don’t understand it. Here we are still in harbour - there surely ought to be plenty of fresh water on board.’

  “And so there is,’ agreed Jimson. ‘But you never know when you leave port on one of these sailing tubs how long it will be before you make port again. You’re pretty much at the mercy of wind and weather. ‘Course, you could fill up the hold with tanks of water, but then what would you do for space to store your whale oil? And, believe me, the skipper puts whale oil before water. Whale oil means money, water only means lives. If it came right down to it, I’m sure he’d rather have a few of us go raving mad o’thirst than crawl back into port with a light load o’ oil.’

  ‘But you must use water to wash your clothes,’ Hal said.

  ‘We do - but not fresh water. Come back and I’ll show you. There’s our clothes-line.’ He pointed to a coil of rope beside a barrel. ‘Once we get moving we’ll soak our dirty clothes in that barrel - it contains a weak acid solution - then we’ll tie them to the end of that line and throw it overboard. We’ll drag that bundle of clothes through the sea for two or three days, and when we haul it out I’ll bet the clothes will be as clean as if you had put them through one of those newfangled washing-machines. Of course, there may be a few holes in them where the sharks have closed then’ jaws on them.’

  “Do the sharks ever tear them off that line?’

  “No. One taste, and they let them go. That’s what usually happens. But a couple o’ months ago one fool of a shark swallowed the whole bundle. Probably there was some blood on the cloth that made him think it was edible. That shark must have been real surprised when be found he couldn’t get away. He was towed behind the ship nobody knows how long until someone noticed him floundering about and hauled him in. We opened him up and there were our clothes. They had to be dragged another three days to get the shark-smell out of them.’

  The boys did very little sleeping that night. They could not make their bones comfortable on the hard boards of their bunks, and they were too excited by their new surroundings and the trip before them.

  There were about twenty other men in the room, some trying to sleep, others sitting on the edges of their bunks talking and smoking. The smoke from their cigarettes and p
ipes, the fumes from the whale-oil lamps, the smell of blood and blubber and bilge-water - all this plus the heat made breathing difficult. The boys were not sorry when at four in the morning the second mate bellowed down through the hatch:

  ‘All hands on deck!’

  In the grey light of dawn the Killer sailed from Honolulu. On the right lay Pearl Harbor, scene of death and destruction when Japan entered the Second World War. As if to balance this place of terrible memory, on the left was one of the loveliest and happiest spots in the world -the long curve of Waikiki Beach and bold Diamond Head wearing the pink halo of approaching sunrise.

  Roger, standing by the rail enjoying the view, was roused by a kick in the rear that almost lifted him from the deck. He turned, fighting mad, clenching his fists for battle. The bulging eyes of Captain Grindle glared down at him.

  ‘I’ll have nobody loafing on this ship,’ growled the captain.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I was just waiting for orders.’

  ‘You’ll get your orders in the seat of your pants if you don’t step lively.’ He looked round with a sly grin. ‘I’ll find you something to do.’ He scanned the deck for a job that would be hard enough, something that would tax the strength and courage of a young boy. Finally he glanced up the swaying mast.

  Roger hoped he would not be sent aloft. Not just now. Some other time he would like it, but now he felt a little faint for loss of sleep and his breakfast of overripe meat had not agreed with him. The captain seemed to guess the boy’s uneasiness.

  That’s the place for you,’ he laughed savagely. ‘Up in the rings, and be quick about it. Jiggs is up the foremast. You shinny up the main. All the way to the peak. And you’re not going up there to look at the view. Watch for whales, and if you see a spout sing out. Let’s see how sharp your eyes are. If you spot a whale before Jiggs does I’ll let you come down. If you don’t, you’ll stay there until you do, and I don’t care if it takes a week. Got no use for babes on deck. Get up there into your cradle, and I hope it rocks you sick.’

  Roger was half-way up the ratlines to the first platform before this speech was finished. He had never climbed anything so unsteady as this wobbling rope ladder. He would be glad to reach the solid safety of the first platform, or ‘top’, as it was called.

  He was about to go through the opening in the platform when another bellow came from below.

  ‘Not through the lubber’s hole,’ roared the captain. I’ll have no lubbers on this ship. Up around by the futtock shrouds.’

  Perhaps he hoped to confuse the boy. But Roger knew that the hole he had been about to pass through was called the lubber’s hole. And he knew the futtock shrouds were those iron rods fastened at one end to the mast and at the other to the outer edge of the platform. To climb them he must leave the rope ladder and go up hand over hand with the skill of a monkey, while his feet dangled in space.

  Half-way up a lurch of the vessel loosened his grip and he hung suspended by one hand, swinging like a pendulum in a grandfather’s clock.

  A roar of laughter came from below. The captain was thoroughly enjoying himself. Several of the crew had gathered now, but they did not join in the laughter. Hal started up the ratlines to the relief of his brother. A sharp order from the captain stopped him.

  Every time the windjammer swayed to starboard Roger was directly over the try-pots in which blubber from the last whale catch was still boiling. If he fell into one of these great steaming vats the comedy would turn to tragedy. But it would still be comedy to the warped mind of Captain Grindle. A wide grin made the porcupine bristles on his chin and cheeks stand out like spears as his eyes passed from the clinging figure to the try-pots and back again. The steam curled up like a snake around the hanging body. Hal edged close to the pots. If the boy fell he might catch him, or at least yank him from the boiling oil in time to save his life.

  There came a gasp of relief from the crew and a disappointed grunt from the captain when a list to port swung Roger against the shroud, which he was now able to grip with both hands and his feet as well. He clung there trembling for an instant, then slowly inched his way up over the edge of the top and collapsed on the platform.

  A cheer rose from the crew. It was checked at once by the harsh voice of Captain Grindle.

  ‘You varmint! Is this a time to take a nap? I’ll wake you up.’

  He seized a belaying-pin and flung it upward with all his great strength. It struck the underside of the top with a resounding whack.

  Roger struggled to his feet. He stood swaying dizzily, one arm round the mast.

  The crash of the belaying-pin had brought Mr Scott up from his cabin. He turned to Hal.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Just a big bully having some fun,’ said Hal bitterly. ‘Grindle ordered Roger into the rings. Wouldn’t let him go through the lubber’s hole. Nothing would have pleased the brute better than to see him drop into the try-pots and get boiled in oil.’

  The captain, cursing, grabbed another belaying-pin and hurled it aloft. His aim was good. The heavy wooden club passed through the lubber’s hole and struck Roger on the elbow.

  Hal and Mr Scott at once began to force their way through the crowd, determined to overpower the captain. The men opened a path to let them through. They were eager to see someone challenge the authority of the master.

  The captain saw the two men coming. His eyes shone with evil pleasure and his hand went back to his hip where a revolver rested in its holster.

  Then the way was suddenly blocked by the sailor called Jimson. Hal and Scott found themselves held firmly in the grip of the big seaman.

  ‘Stop it, you fools!’ said Jimson in a voice just above a rasping, whisper. ‘You’ll get yourselves killed. You’ll only make it worse for the kid.’ Then he leaned close to Hal’s ear, making sure that the captain should not overhear him. ‘This ain’t the time. The time is coming, but it ain’t now.’

  Captain Grindle, seeing that he was not to be attacked, roared with laughter.

  ‘What’s the matter, gents?’ he cried scornfully. ‘Why don’t you come on? The welcome mat is out. Reception committee is waiting. Step right up, gents - tea will be served.’ He spun his revolver around two fingers. ‘Pink tea. Will you have lemon or cream? I’ll send a cup aloft to your baby brother.’

  He fired a shot into the air, not directly at Roger but close enough so that the boy, who was once more climbing the ratlines, heard the whistle of the bullet.

  Again Hal and Scott struggled to get at the captain, but several of the crew held them back. Again Jimson whispered harshly: ‘This ain’t the time. The time is coming, but this ain’t it.’

  ‘Cowards and softies!’ cried the captain. T got nothing but cowards and softies on my ship. The whole pack o’ ye wouldn’t dare face up to a real man. Now get for’ard and be quick about it.’ He fired two shots over their heads. The men retired sullenly towards the fo’c’sle.

  Roger, leaving the top behind him, was climbing higher. For the platform called the ‘top’ is not the top. It is only the head of the lower section of the mast. Two-thirds of the mast rise above it.

  Roger thought the mast would never end. He felt like Jack climbing the beanstalk that reached all the way up to another world. He could not use his right arm. The blow from the belaying-pin had not broken any bones, but it had so bruised the elbow that he could not straighten or flex the arm without acute pain.

  He tacked the hand within his belt and held to the ratlines with his left hand only. At every rise he must release his grip and transfer his hand to the next higher rung. This might have been easy to do on a wooden ladder, but on a ladder of rope that swung here and there like a loose cobweb at every motion of the ship he was in constant danger of clutching at a rung which was no longer where he had just seen it.

  Every near-miss brought a snort of laughter from Captain Grindle, who was now Roger’s sole audience. Nothing would so tickle the captain’s distorted sense of humour as to see the young ‘gent�
� come to grief.

  Roger was determined not to give him that satisfaction. He would not fall, and he would not fail. He was going to reach the rings.

  Every time he looked up at them they seemed as far away as ever. It was as if the more he climbed the more an invisible hand drew them a bit higher. At times he must stop and do nothing but cling for his life, as a gust of wind caught his cobweb and whipped it about.

  At last he crawled up into the rings, and felt as if he had returned to a solid world when he gripped the iron hoop tightly bolted to the mast. True, the whole basket made dizzy circles in the sky, but it was firm ground compared with the rope ladder.

  He looked down at the disappointed master, now almost completely hidden from view by the sails. Captain Grindle shook his fist as if Roger had deliberately offended him by arriving safely in the rings.

  ‘Remember,’ yelled the captain, ‘you’ll sight first, or stay there till you do.’

  Of course, that was not fair. Sighting the spout of & whale is not easy. Experience helps, and Jiggs had had experience, plenty of it.

  The beginner is apt to think he sees the spout of a whale when it is only the spume of a breaking wave. Later he gets to know the difference. The spray from a wave-crest is irregular and quickly loses its force. The spout of a whale is like the^spurt of water from a high-pressure hose.

  And yet it doesn’t quite look like water, because it isn’t water. Whalers of the nineteenth century supposed it to be water. They supposed the whale to be spitting out water it had taken in by mouth while under the sea.

  Now we know that the column of white is steam, not water. The giant of the deeps is letting off steam. The air that he has held in his lungs during his half-hour or more beneath the sea is forcibly expelled. Having been retained so long within the warm body of the whale the air is at the blood temperature of whales and humans, about 98-6 degrees Fahrenheit. It is full of moisture because it has been inside a moist body.

 

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