05 Whale Adventure

by Willard Price

  ‘Equal?’ snapped the captain. I’m better. There’s not a man in the crew who could stand up to me in a fair fight.’

  ‘Not even Hunt?’

  The captain fell into the trap.

  ‘Hunt? Why, I could take him apart with my bare hands.’

  ‘Now you’re talking!’ exclaimed Scott, pretending to be lost in admiration, That sounds like a real man. No gun. A man like you doesn’t need a gun. You could leave it in your cabin. You wouldn’t be afraid to do that. Not you.’

  ‘Afraid?’ scoffed Grindle, ‘I’ll show you how afraid I am of that young squirt.’

  He took out the revolver and went down the companionway to his cabin. He came back without the gun. He strode up the deck to the mainmast.

  Chapter 18

  Grindle takes a blubber bath

  ‘Loose that man,’ he ordered.

  Bruiser, wonderingly, unbound Hal’s hands. Hal turned about to face the captain.

  Grindle’s pop eyes swept haughtily over his crew like a pair of searchlights.

  ‘Breach of discipline,’ he said, ‘don’t go on the Killer. It has to be punished. Yesterday this man made insulting remarks about my ability to run a ship. Today he has the impudence to come back from the dead and try to scare me with a pack o’ ghost tricks. He didn’t scare me a bit. I’m so little scared of him I’m going to give him a choice. A choice between the cat and these two hands!’

  He stopped for a moment to let the idea soak in.

  ‘It ain’t fair,’ came a voice from the crowd. ‘You got a gun.’

  ‘No gun,’ said Grindle. ‘It’s below decks. A man like me don’t need a gun. The science fellow says so, and he’s right. Don’t heed a cat neither. Just my own bare hands, that’s enough. And when I get done with this varmint he won’t have one bone connected to another,’

  He turned to Hal. ‘Or perhaps you’d rather have the eighty? Whichever you prefer. Our aim is to oblige.’ He bowed in mock courtesy.

  It was not easy for Hal to decide. Eighty lashes would, he knew, leave him an unconscious bleeding heap on the deck. Men had died under the blows of the cat-o’-nine-tails. The alternative was a hand-to-hand fight with Grindle. That could be tough too. Hal was tall and powerful for his age, but Grindle was enough taller so that he could look straight over Hal’s head. He was heavier and more solidly set. Long years of sea life had put muscles that bulged like sausages under the skin of his arms and back of his shoulder-blades. His hands were as big as meat-hooks. ‘Come on, Gent!’ demanded Grindle. ‘Cat or hands?’ ‘Hands,’ said Hal and closed with his opponent. At once he felt the hands that he had invited locked round his own throat. Hal ducked and plunged his head into the big fellow’s stomach. Grindle let out a grunt of surprise and relaxed his grip just enough so that Hal could tear loose. Hal backed off a few feet.

  ‘Hah!’ exclaimed Grindle. ‘Running away already!’ He came fast, his big gorilla-like hands outstretched. Hal let him come. He even helped him to come. He seized one of the hands and pulled, twisting to the right at the same time. The captain went over Hal’s shoulder, turned a somersault, and came down on his back on the deck. The breath was knocked out of him, and some of the conceit too.

  Hal had not visited Japan in vain. While there, his Japanese friends had taught him some of the moves of judo (ju-jitsu). The principle of judo is to let your opponent destroy himself. You conquer by yielding. If he plunges at you you let him come, but step out of the way at the last moment and let him plunge into the fill. If he comes running you may trip him and give him a bad fall. His own speed is his undoing. If he swings a fist at you you may seize him by the wrist and increase his swing so that he throws his shoulder out of joint. If he exerts a nerve or muscle you may increase the strain to the danger-point by striking that nerve or muscle. At such a moment of strain, a slight tap on a sensitive spot may have a crippling effect. The judo-fighter is taught the location of these sensitive spots; for example the elbow, or funny bone, where a nerve is partially exposed, the armpit, the ankle, the wrist-bones, the liver, a tendon below the ear, the nerves of the upper arm, and the Adam’s apple.

  In judo the man with the big muscles may be beaten by the man with the quick brain. Hal was no expert in judo, but he knew more about it than his opponent. He might not be as strong as the captain, but he was wiry, swift, and intelligent. If Grindle was a lion, Hal was a panther.

  The captain never knew where to find him. He lowered his head and charged like a bull, hoping to strike Hal in the solar plexus - he found himself butting the capstan instead. He shot his great fist towards Hal’s face, but Hal moved his head to one side and the fist caught Bruiser an ugly crack on the jaw.

  ‘Look out what you’re doing,’ growled Bruiser.

  The men were laughing. The captain got the painful impression that he was making a fool of himself. Was he going to be beaten by this gent? Not if he knew it. He would bash the fellow’s head in. He seized a belaying-pin. ‘Not fair,’ yelled the crowd. ‘Hands only.’ Grindle swung the heavy club, but at the moment when it should have made contact with Hal’s head he felt a sharp rap on his wrist that spoiled his grip and the weapon went overboard.

  With a savage curse he pulled a knife from his belt. His crew booed him but he paid them no heed. He rushed at Hal, who retreated swiftly until he backed up against one of the try-pots. Grindle came on at a dead run. At the last moment Hal ducked, seized one of the captain’s ankles and heaved. Grindle was lifted in the air and came down head-first into the pot.

  Luckily for him the blubber was not boiling. The try-pots had been neglected when the big whale came in and the fire had burned low. The contents of the pot were like a rank-smelling jelly or paste, and when the captain’s head finally popped up out of the mess it was completely covered with half-solid blubber. The men rocked with laughter.

  The captain rubbed blubber from his eyes and spat blubber from his mouth. ‘Get me out of here!’ he screamed.

  Hal and Bruiser pulled him out and he collapsed on the deck in a puddle of grease. He still held his knife, but all the fight had gone out of him.

  He stood up, dripping blobs of fat. He wobbled aft to his cabin and left a river of blubber behind him.

  After he had stripped, cleaned himself as well as he could and put on fresh clothes, he sat down heavily to think things over. Before him on his desk was his open log-book. His eyes fell on the entry:

  On this day, Seaman Hal Hunt, guilty of defying established authority, received eighty lashes.

  He crossed it out.

  Chapter 19

  Grindle shakes hands

  Grindle took up his revolver.

  He balanced it on the palm of his hand. This gun was his only friend. It felt good. Courage flowed from it up his arm and into his chest.

  Much of the conceit had been cooked out of him by his plunge into the pot of whale grease. The gun made him feel better. He was still master, so long as he possessed the only firearm on the ship.

  He could hear them still laughing on deck. His friend, the gun, would stop that. A gun has no sense of humour.

  ‘I’ll show them,’ he muttered.

  His anger grew as he looked at the spoiled page of his log. What would the ship’s owners think when they read this page? A man was logged as dead, but wasn’t dead. The same man got eighty lashes, but didn’t. What kind of nonsense was this? The owners would think the captain a fool for writing such things and then crossing them out. Didn’t he know his own mind?

  He knew what he was going to do now, but he wouldn’t write it down this time until it was done. As soon as he felt a little less wobbly he was going to go on deck with this gun and fill the Gent’s carcass with bullets. Then he would write in his log that he had been compelled to use the gun in self-defence against an unruly seaman who had tried to murder him.

  He thought this over. He began to see that it would not work. The crew was against him. If he shot Hunt they would report it to the police as soon as the ship r
eached port.

  A sly grin came over his bristly face.

  I’ve got it, he thought. Ill fool ‘em. Make ‘em think it’s all right between me and the Gent. Pretend we let bygones be bygones. No hard feelings. We had a fight and it’s all over and now we’re as friendly as two kittens in a basket. And after I get them thinking that way they won’t blame me when the Gent has an accident.

  He settled back happily into his chair. A real bad accident. I’ll fix it for him so he won’t come out of it alive. But nobody’ll be able to pin anything on me.

  He got up and tried his legs. They still felt like two ribbons of spaghetti. His back was bruised where it had thumped the deck, his solar plexus ached where Hal had dived into it, and his head was battered where he had bashed it against the capstan.

  He looked in the mirror. His skin had been blistered here and there by the hot blubber. He could be thankful it had not been hotter. But he was not thankful -only possessed by a terrible hate and passion for revenge.

  To think that a nineteen-year-old boy had done all this to him! Wrathfully he blew his nose; blubber filled his handkerchief. He wiped the last traces of blubber from the corners of his eyes, and dug blubber out of his ears. Despite all his cleaning, he still smelled like a dead whale.

  He went up on deck. The fires had been built up again and the blubber in the try-pots was boiling. The black smoke rising from the whale-scraps that were fed into the fire, and the white steam rising from the try-pots swirled and swooped through the rigging like great black and white birds. Men dumped chunks of blubber into the pots and other men drew off the oil into barrels. At the same time men out on the cutting-stage were beginning to peel off the hide of Hal’s great whale. Everyone was in great good humour, still laughing at what had happened to the captain.

  ‘There he is!’ someone warned, and they all quit work to see what would happen. ‘He’ll be hopping mad,’ said one. ‘He’ll probably shoot the place up,’ said another, and looked for something to hide behind.

  ‘He’ll kill Hunt,’ said someone else. ‘I’d hate to be in Hunt’s shoes now.’

  Another said: ‘If he lays a hand on Hunt, we’ll finish him.’

  But the captain did not pull his gun and he did not seem to be in a rage. In fact there was something almost like a smile behind the porcupine bristles. ‘Hunt,’ he called. ‘I have something to say to you.’ Hal stepped forward. He was as wary as a cat, and ready to move fast if the captain drew his gun. But Grindle only stretched out his hand.

  ‘Put it there,’ he said. ‘Let’s shake hands and forget it. Nobody can say I ain’t a good sport. It was a fair fight and you beat me and that’s that. Shake.’

  Hal did not remind the captain that it was not a fair fight Instead of fighting hand to hand as agreed, Grindle had taken up a belaying-pin and then a knife. No good

  sport would do that. But Hal was so grateful for Grindle’s change of heart that he impulsively shook the hand of the captain of the Killer.

  ‘It’s very handsome of you to feel that way about it,’ Hal said. ‘I was afraid you might be sore.’

  ‘Me sore!’ Grindle laughed. ‘Boy, you don’t know me. Sore? On the contrary, it’s a pleasure to find I’ve a real man on my ship. To show you how I feel about you, I’m going to promote you. From now on you’re master harpooner.’

  ‘But I’ve never thrown a harpoon,’ Hal protested.

  ‘Listen, boy,’ said the captain, thrusting his evil-smelling bristles among which bits of blubber still remained close to Hal’s face, ‘anybody who can throw me can throw a harpoon.’ He laughed loudly at his own joke. ‘Yes sir, you’re a harpooner from now on. Shake again! ‘

  Hal shook again, but a little uncomfortably. He had the slightest suspicion that the captain was putting on an act. But he brushed it aside, for he was always inclined to believe the best about others and perhaps even the brutal Grindle had a good streak in him.

  During the next few days the captain was persistently kind to Hal. This was not easy. Inside the captain’s barrel chest was a churning rage and it was hard to turn this into smiles and pretty talk. The rage had to get out somehow, so he vented it upon other members of the crew. He counted them all as his enemies, for they had laughed at him.

  Chapter 20

  The mako shark

  One whose laugh especially stuck in his memory because his cackle was high and shrill was Sails, who looked after the ship’s canvas.

  Sails had always been a thorn in his flesh. He was older than the captain and sometimes failed to conceal the fact that he had more sense. Having been at sea most of his sixty years he was weather-beaten and wise and did not hesitate to differ with his chief.

  A split developed in the mainsail and the captain ordered Sails to patch it up. ‘No, no,’ said Sails. ‘It would only break again.’ ‘I say patch it up.’

  ‘And I say not,’ retorted Sails testily. ‘That sail is old and rotten. It’s done its duty. I’ll chuck it away and put in a new sail.’

  ‘You’ll do as I tell you,’ thundered Grindle. ‘Sailcloth costs money. We’ll have no new sail while the old one can be patched.’

  ‘But it will only bust -‘

  ‘If it busts, I’ll bust you - so I will by the Holy Harry!

  I know you, you old fossil. You’ll fix it so it will break and then you can say “I told you so”. Well, I’ll tell you something. If that sail breaks, you’ll take a ride.’

  To ‘take a ride’ was to be tied to the end of a line like a bundle of dirty clothes, heaved overboard, and dragged behind the ship.

  ‘You can’t scare me,’ snapped Sails. But he said no more, for he knew the captain was quite capable of carrying out his threat. Muttering, he set to work on the sail, applying the patch with all the skill of long experience. He didn’t want to ‘take a ride’. At last he was satisfied that he could do no more. The patch was strong and was stoutly stitched to the canvas; but the canvas itself was thin and brittle.

  ‘It ain’t no use,’ he said to himself regretfully. ‘It will break.’

  And so it did. The patched sail had not been up for an hour before a sudden burst of wind split it along the line of the stitching. It broke with a sound like a pistol shot. The captain came running. He found Sails mournfully regarding the whipping rage of canvas.

  T told you it would bust,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you told me,’ sneered the captain. ‘Then you made sure it would do just what you said. All right, I warned you. I told you what I’d do, and I’ll do it. Bruiser! The dragline!’

  Angrily Sails turned upon the captain. ‘You dare to lay a hand on me and you’ll be in irons before the day is over.’

  The captain’s face burned red. ‘You dare to threaten me? You’ll feel different about it after you’ve had a bath. Bruiser!’

  Bruiser hesitated. ‘He’s not as young as he used to be,’ he said. ‘I don’t know that he could stand it’

  ‘Who asked you for advice?’ stormed the captain. ‘Get a bowline on him.’

  ‘It could be murder, sir,’ objected Bruiser. ‘I want no part of it.’

  ‘Whose murder?’ retorted the captain, drawing his gun. ‘Perhaps it will be yours if you don’t carry out my orders. Now will you tie that line?’

  Bruiser looked coolly into the barrel of the captain’s revolver. ‘No sir, I won’t.’

  The men had gathered solidly around Bruiser; The captain’s angry eyes surveyed them. They said nothing, but he didn’t like the way they looked at him. He realized that there was not a man among them who would put a dragline on the old sailmaker.

  He seized Sails by the arm and walked him to the aft rail. Deftly he fitted the loop under Sails’ shoulders. The proud old sailmaker did not struggle or cry out. The men were coming aft.

  ‘Stop where you are,’ commanded the captain. ‘I’ll shoot the man who takes another step.’

  The men stood still, growling, irresolute. Before they could decide what to do the captain stooped, threw
his arm round Sails’ legs, and heaved him over the rail. There was a dull splash as the sailmaker, still silent, dropped into the sea.

  Like so many of the older seamen Sails could not swim. His body at once sank out of sight. The line ran out fifty, sixty, seventy feet and then snapped taut on the bitts.

  The drag on the line yanked Sails to the surface and fee was hauled along through the wave-tops at a speed of about four knots. He choked and gasped for air but did

  not cry for help. The captain watched him with grim satisfaction.

  ‘That will teach the stubborn old fool.’

  The men anxiously watched the sea for sharks and killer-whales. There was no sign of the two-foot triangle of a shark’s fin, nor the man-high fin of the killer. But just when they began to believe that this part of the sea was free of dangerous fish the surface exploded close to the unfortunate man and up went something blue and white like a fountain, on up twenty feet high, then turned and dived into the sea.

  ‘Mako!’ yelled the mate, and the men made a rush to the after rail in defiance of the captain’s gun. They seized the line and began to haul it in.

  There are sharks and sharks. Many of them are quite harmless. People who have gone in swimming among harmless sharks without being attacked may foolishly believe that all sharks are harmless.

  But there are three kinds that are man-eaters. They are the mako, the white shark, and the tiger-shark.

  The white shark is the largest, reaching a length of forty feet. The tiger-shark is the smallest, about twelve feet long. The mako is the worst and best of the three.

  The best because of bis blue and white beauty, his amazing speed because he is the swiftest of all fishes, and his spectacular habit of leaping twenty feet into the air (twice as high as the tarpon).

  The worst because of his enormous, razor-edged teeth and his utterly savage nature. He is afraid of nothing, always hungry, and always spoiling for a fight.