‘All right, let him go.’
Chapter 27
Winged messenger
The released bird with a final angry squawk soared into the air, the red streamer fluttering behind him. Even at five hundred yards Scott’s fiery shirt-tail could be plainly seen.
The goney struck out due west. He seemed delighted to escape from his tormentors.
Nothing could more please the tormentors.
‘Disgusted with us, he is,’ said Bruiser. ‘He’s making straight for another ship.’ Every hungry and thirsty man had a new spark of courage and hope.
But in an hour the bird was back. He had evidently forgiven his persecutors. Again he hovered over the boat, though he was cautious enough to ride a little higher than before. His red banner fluttered bravely in the breeze.
The men tried to shoo him away. ‘Go on - chase yourself !’ They made motions of throwing rocks at him, but unfortunately they had no rocks nor anything else to throw. The goney watched with beady eye for any scraps that might be tossed overboard. Afternoon wore into dusk and dusk into night and the bird still floated above.
Again the castaways huddled around and upon each other in the bottom of the boats. Sleep was difficult, due to the nagging misery of hunger and thirst.
But the first man to open his eyes at dawn roused the others with a joyful shout:
‘Bill’s gone!’
They scanned the sky. There was not a sign of the great white wanderer. Hopes rose high.
That factory ship we saw can’t be more than a few hundred miles away,’ Jimson said. ‘She had about a dozen catchers. That makes thirteen chances we’ll be picked up.’
‘Providin’ your stupid bird finds the ships,’ put in Grindle. ‘That goney ain’t got radar, you know.’
‘Birds have something very much like radar,’ said Scott.
Grindle tried another tack. He was determined to turn the men against Durkins. If he could just make a fool of the second mate he might still get back his command.
‘It it was me,’ he said. ‘I’d be makin’ straight for Christmas Island. It’s due west, and it’s a lot closer than your French islands.’
Durkins did not answer. But Bruiser spoke up smartly:
‘Shut your trap, Cap. With the wind the way it is we wouldn’t get to Christmas by Christmas.’ ‘Our best bet is south,’ said Jimson. ‘Our best bet is Bill,’ said Scott cheerfully. But as the fresh morning air gave way to the scorching heat of midday both bets began to seem very poor. The men looked at Durkins with bloodshot eyes, inflamed by sun and brine. Was he doing the right thing? Which would come first, Tahiti or death? And were they idiots to be trusting their lives to a bird?
They splashed sea-water on their clothes. This had a cooling effect, but it did not last. Exposure to sea-water was bringing out salt-water boils.
Hunger was agonizing. Even a belt or a boot began to look good. One man tried chewing a leather bailing-bucket.
A small shark appeared. Jiggs dangled his bare foot over the side to attract it. It was a dangerous experiment, but it would be worth while if he got something to eat. -
The shark came closer, eyeing the flashing fishlike thing that trailed through the water. Then it lunged.
Jiggs brought down an oar upon its head, jerking his foot away at the same time.
Perhaps he was fortunate that the shark got only the big toe and not the whole foot. The shark swam away, relishing this titbit, while Jiggs and his companions still went hungry.
Men dying of thirst do not behave like ordinary people. Jiggs felt no pain where the toe had been - he only saw the dripping blood. He caught it in the palm of his hand and drank it. Then Scott bandaged the stump with a fragment of shirt-tail.
Another cold wet night, and another blistering day. Hunger was less, but thirst was more. The stomach had given up its demand for food. But the need for water had become a shrieking pain.
Thirst had cracked the lips and swelled the tongue so that every man talked as if he had a baked potato in his mouth. Some began to drink sea-water.
‘Better not,’ said the mate, ‘unless you want to go off your head.’
But the mate thought that he himself must be going out of his mind when at the next dawn he saw a ship on the horizon. He poked Hal Hunt. ‘Do you see what I see? Over yonder.’ Hal rubbed his sore eyes. ‘It’s a ship and no mistake. A catcher, I think.’
Some of the men cheered faintly. Others were too weak to raise their heads. ‘Ill bet she’s looking for us,’ the mate said. Grindle peered at the ship. ‘She may be looking for us, but she won’t find us. We can see her because she’s big, but she can’t see our sail at this distance.’
‘But she’s coming straight on. Pretty soon she will see us.’
But as they watched the ship veered slowly to the north and then to the north-west. In half an hour she had disappeared. T told you so,’ said Grindle.
The men sank into a heavy stupor. They lay as they had lain all night, heaped in the bottom of the boat. Even the mate was ready to give up. He closed his eyes and slept.
Hal never knew how much time went by before he heard that whirring sound. Drowsily he looked up. Then he shouted - as well as anyone could shout with a mouth full of tongue. ‘Look!’
Directly over the whaleboat hovered a small helicopter. It settled to within twenty or thirty feet and the pilot looked down. His grin was good to see. ‘How goes it?9 he shouted. The mate tried to answer but could not command his
‘Got your message by bird,’ shouted the pilot. ‘Been looking for you for two days. I’ll phone the catcher.’
They could hear him speaking over the radio telephone. Then he looked down again.
‘Catcher 7 is just over the edge. Perhaps you saw her a while back. She’ll be here in half an hour.’ And with a friendly wave and another grin he rose to a safe altitude and waited.
The change in the men was remarkable. A few moments before they had been sunk in misery and resigned to death. Now it was as if they had just had a drink of fresh, cold spring-water.
They strained their eyes for a glimpse of the ship. There it was at last, a small white blob that rapidly swelled as the catcher bore down at a speed of fifteen knots.
Hal estimated that she was a vessel of about four hundred tons - a little larger than the bark Killer. She had a single smokestack. There were two masts but they bore no sails. Radio antennae stretched between them. At the peak of the forward mast was a crow’s-nest and in it stood a lookout.
Now the name, Catcher 7, painted on the bows could be plainly seen. Above it in the very bow was a platform on which stood something that looked like a cannon. Hal knew it must be a harpoon gun.
And to think that there were a dozen of these catchers, every one of them bigger than Captain Grindle’s Killer. At the masthead of every catcher was a lookout, watching for whales. Even these twelve pairs of eyes were not enough. Also there were the pilots of the little insect-like helicopters which ranged across the sea more swiftly and widely than any catcher could go. Whenever the helicopter pilot sighted a whale he would radio back the news to the nearest catcher.
And all these catchers and copters were just small chickens compared to the great mother hen, the factory ship. A catcher after killing a whale towed it to the factory ship where it was hauled aboard and cut up. The modern floating factory could process more whales in a day than the old-time whale-ship in a month.
After the castaways had been taken aboard the catcher and given a little water and a little food (too much at first would have made them deathly sick) they were made comfortable below deck in the bunks of the crew. There they slept the day out.
At night they received a little more food and water, then slept again while the catcher’s crew who had obligingly given up their quarters got through the night as best they could on benches in the messroom.
In the morning there was a bit more to drink and to eat, then more sleep. Sleep! It seemed as if they could never get enough of it.
Chapter 28
Whaling the easy way
The first one to bounce back was the youngest. It was about noon when Roger woke to find that his tongue no longer felt like a large potato, the dizziness and dullness were gone from his head, and he was almost tempted to get up.
Presently he heard a running about on the deck above, much shouting, then the boom of a gun. His curiosity got the better of him. He slid out of his bunk, pulled on his clothes, and went up on deck. His legs seemed to want to buckle under him, but he managed to make his wobbly way forward.
Several men were moving about on the gun platform. One of them noticed him.
‘Come on up, boy,’ he called.
Roger climbed the few steps to the platform. The man at the gun greeted him heartily.
‘Well, I’ll be danged if the kid isn’t the first one to get on his feet. Good for you, lad.’
Roger said: ‘I thought I heard the gun.’
‘So you did, but we missed. A big sperm. He’s under now, but he’ll probably be up again in a few minutes.’
Roger inspected the gun with interest. It looked quite like a cannon, except that a harpoon projected from its muzzle. ‘Know how it works?’ asked the gunner. ‘Well, I’ve heard about it,’ Roger said. ‘There’s a bomb in the harpoon. When the harpoon goes into the whale the bomb explodes - and kills the whale.’
‘You’re ninety per cent right,’ grinned the gunner. ‘I mean, about ninety per cent of the whalers still use bomb harpoons. We don’t. This is the very latest - the electric harpoon.’ ‘How is that better?’
‘Several ways. One trouble with the bomb is that when it explodes it scatters bits of steel through the flesh. When the whale goes into the factory these steel fragments damage the saws. Another thing - a bomb killing is very painful. The whale doesn’t die at once. He suffers terrible agony. Why make him suffer if it isn’t necessary? And there’s one more point: agony poisons the meat. Doctors say it’s the same way with humans; if you suffer terrible worry or pain your system becomes toxic -poisoned. Toxic whale meat is no good. But with the electric harpoon it’s a different story. It packs a wallop of two hundred and twenty volts, one hundred amperes. The electric shock kills the whale before he has time to get poisoned. In ten seconds he’s a dead duck. It’s as painless as the electric chair.’
Roger smiled. This gunner made the electric chair sound almost attractive. Well, perhaps it was better than a long-drawn-out death agony.
‘If the electric harpoon is so good,’ he said, ‘why don’t they all use it?’
‘Because it’s new. Some of them are afraid it won’t work. The most progressive companies already use it -they all will in time. You’ll see for yourself what kind of a job it does.’
‘Breaches!’ came a call from the masthead. ‘Five points off the weather-bow.’
The whale had surfaced half a mile away. The two-thousand-horsepower diesel of the catcher sprang into action. The catcher raced towards its quarry. The whale was swimming away at full speed, but the catcher swiftly overhauled it.
How easy, Roger thought, compared with the back-breaking labour at the oars of a whaleboat! And how swift. And safe. The monster that could smash a whaleboat to bits and kill its crew was no great danger to the men on the deck of this four-hundred-ton, steel-hulled catcher. Modern methods were certainly more efficient, but they had taken much of the adventure out of whaling.
The catcher slid up beside the speeding whale. The gunner swivelled his gun into position.
‘Want to shoot?’ he asked Roger. ‘When I say “Fire”, pull the trigger.’
He sighted the gun carefully, then said: ‘Fire!’
Roger pressed the trigger. The harpoon shot out, trailing a line to which was bound an insulated electric wire carrying the fatal charge. The harpoon sank deep just behind the head.
Without a groan, without a tremor, the whale rolled over on its side, dead.
A line was dropped over the tail flukes. With the seventy-ton monster in tow the catcher ploughed on with scarcely any lessening of its former speed.
Chapter 29
Marvels of the factory ship
Late in the afternoon the factory ship hove in sight. To Roger it looked as big as an aircraft carrier.
‘She’s a whopper!’ he said.
Thirty thousand tons,’ said the gunner who had befriended him.
Roger thought of the three-hundred-ton Killer, a ship that would have been considered large in the whaling days of the past century. This vessel was one hundred times as big.
But not as beautiful. Instead of twenty white sails billowing in the breeze she carried two grimy smokestacks. The curious thing about them was that they were not one. behind the other, as on an ordinary ship, but side by side.
The most amazing thing about this ship was that it seemed to have lost its rear end. It was chopped off square. Where the stern should have been was a great gaping hole, wide enough for two railway trains.
They haul the whale right up into the ship through that hole,’ said the gunner. ‘You’ll see how it works
when they take your whale aboard.’
The gunner’s words, ‘your whale’, gave Roger a thrill. Of course, he had only pulled the trigger - yet it was exciting to think that he had shot one of the greatest animals on earth. It was a mixed feeling. Along with the thrill was the regret that the great and wonderful sea monster had had to be killed.
The factory ship was well named. It sounded like a factory. On the Killer there had been no sound but the talk of the men. Here the voices of men were drowned by the roar of the machinery.
There was the hum of scores of motors, the rattle of chains, the grinding of gears, the clank of arms of iron that did what human arms had once done. Yet it took men, skilled men, to run the machinery. Roger learned from the gunner that the crew of the factory ship was three hundred strong.
They were close enough now to see half a dozen helicopters perched like ladybirds on the ship’s forward deck.
The others are out looking for whales.’ said the gunner. ‘We have a dozen altogether.’
The name painted on the bow of the factory ship was Queen of the South.
‘Why the South?’ asked Roger. This is the tropics.’
‘Yes, but our main business is in the Antarctic You see, there are international rules that govern whaling. Up here we can take only sperms. Down south, during the season, we can take blues and fin-whales and seis and humpbacks and most anything we like. We’re on our way there now. Down there we’ll really get busy. We’ll be at it day and night. Our factory ship alone processes fifteen hundred whales a year. And this is only one of many. The total catch is over thirty thousand whales a year. Some people think whaling is a thing of the past. On the contrary, it’s never been as big as it is today.’
‘What kind of a plane is that?’ asked Roger, pointing to an indistinct white object floating in the cloud of steam above the factory ship.
‘Why, that’s your albatross. He’s adopted us now. He likes the scraps of blubber that get thrown overboard. We often have an albatross hanging around and wouldn’t have paid any attention to this one if it hadn’t been for that red rag tied to his foot. We caught him and found your message.’ ‘Good old Bill!’ said Roger fervently. Catcher 7 snugged up alongside the Queen of the South. The twenty-three castaways were taken aboard. Some could walk, others had to be carried, and all were given comfortable quarters in the depths of the great ship. The ship’s doctor skilfully attended to their needs. Roger, still boiling with curiosity, was soon on deck again. There he found Hal and Mr Scott talking to Captain Ramsay of Queen of the South.
They were gazing down at the cutting-deck. A whale was being dragged in through the great hole in the ship’s stern. A winch groaned as it wound in a steel cable attached to what looked like a gigantic pair of pincers clamped on to the monster’s tail. My whale! thought Roger, but said nothing. ‘That was brought in by our catcher,’ his big brothe
r informed him.
‘You don’t say!’ said Roger in mock surprise. ‘Do tell me all about it.’
Hal was glad to find his young brother so eager to learn. ‘Well, you see, there’s a platform in the bow of the catcher, and a gun on the platform.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Roger, making his eyes round.
“The gun holds a harpoon instead of a bullet It fires the harpoon into the whale. There’s a bomb in the harpoon - it explodes and kills the whale.’
‘Well now, I never!’ said Roger. ‘Gosh, a kid can learn something new every day if he just has a big brother to tell him things.’
Hal looked at him suspiciously. Just at this moment the gunner of Catcher 7 joined them.
‘Well, if it ain’t my young friend,’ he said. ‘That’s your whale right there, boy.’
Hal looked puzzled, ‘What do you mean - how is it his whale?’
‘Why, he shot it, of course.’
Hal stared. ‘You young rascal! What were you up to while I was asleep?’
‘Oh,’ said Roger, ‘I was just learning that you can’t believe all you hear. Like that about bombs and harpoons. That’s old-fashioned. These catchers have electric harpoons. But then | you can’t expect to be hep to what’s new if you spend all your time sleeping below decks.’
Hal swooped to grab his mischievous brother with every intention of paddling his rear end. But he found himself too weak to move fast and the youngster easily evaded him. The gunner and Captain Ramsay were laughing.
‘Yes,’ said the captain, ‘things change pretty fast nowadays. If you want to see speed, watch the way they put through this whale.’
Roger’s whale was already being peeled like a banana. Blubber hooks, operated by machinery, plunged into the hide, took hold, and ripped it off in great strips. Knives attacked the strips and cut them into chunks four feet square. More hooks seized the chunks, dragged them to holes in the deck that looked like oversized manholes, and down went the blubber into cookers below deck.
05 Whale Adventure Page 13