The Adventures of Billy Topsail

by Norman Duncan

  CHAPTER XVIII

  _In Which Billy Topsail Joins the Whaler Viking and a School is Sighted_

  OF a sunny afternoon the Newfoundland coastal steamer _Clyde_ droppedBilly Topsail at Snook's Arm, the lair of the whaler _Viking_: adeep, black inlet of the sea, fouled by the blood and waste flesh offorgotten victims, from the slimy edge of which, where a score ofwhitewashed cottages were squatted, the rugged hills lifted their headsto the clean blue of the sky and fairly held their noses. It was allthe manager's doing. Billy had but given him direction through the fogfrom Mad Mull to the landing place of the mail-boat. This was at RuddyCove, in the spring, when the manager was making an annual visit to theold skipper.

  "If you want a berth for the summer, Billy," he had said, "you can beship's boy on the _Viking_."

  On the _Viking_--the whaler! Billy was not in doubt. And so it came topass, in due course of time, that the _Clyde_ dropped him at Snook'sArm.

  At half-past three of the next morning, when the dark o' night was butlightened by a rosy promise out to sea, the _Viking's_ lines were castoff. At half speed the little steamer moved out upon the quiet watersof the Arm, where the night still lay thick and cold--slipped witha soft chug! chug! past the high, black hills; factory and cottagesmelting with the mist and shadows astern, and the new day glowing inthe eastern sky. She was an up-to-date, wide-awake little monster, withseventy-five kills to her credit in three months, again composedlycreeping from the lair to the hunt, equipped with deadly weapons ofoffense.

  "'Low we'll get one the day, sir?" Billy asked the cook.

  "Wonderful quiet day," replied the cook, dubiously. "'Twill be hardfishin'."

  The fin-back whale is not a stupid, passive monster, to be slaughteredoff-hand; nor is the sea a well-ordered shambles. Within the experienceof the _Viking's_ captain, one fin-back wrecked a schooner with a quickslap of the tail, and another looked into the forecastle of an ironwhaler from below. The fin-back is the biggest, fleetest, shyest whaleof them all; until an ingenious Norwegian invented the harpoon gun,they wallowed and multiplied in the Newfoundland waters undisturbed.They were quite safe from pursuit; no whaler of the old school dreamedof taking after them in his cockle shell--they were too wary and fleetfor that.

  "Ay," the cook repeated; "on a day like this a whale can _play_ withthe _Viking_."

  The _Viking_ was an iron screw-steamer, designed for chasing whales,and for nothing else. She was mostly engines, winches and gun. Shecould slip along, without much noise, at sixteen knots an hour; andshe could lift sixty tons from the bottom of the sea with her littlefinger. Her gun--the swivel gun, with a three-inch bore, pitched at thebow, clear of everything--could drive a four-foot, 123-pound harpoonup to the hilt in the back of a whale if within range; and the harpoonitself--it protruded from the muzzle of the gun, with the rope attachedto the shaft and coiled below--was a deadly missile. It was tipped withan iron bomb, which was designed to explode in the quarry's vitals whenthe rope snapped taut, and with half a dozen long barbs, which were tospread and take hold at the same instant.

  "Well," Billy Topsail sighed, his glance on the gun and the harpoon,"if they hits a whale, that there arrow ought t' do the work!"

  "It does," said the cook, quietly.

  All morning long, they were all alive on deck--every man of thatNorwegian crew, from the grinning man in the crow's nest, which waslashed to a stubby yellow mast, to the captain on the gun platform,with the glass to his eyes, and the stokers who stuck their heads outof the engine room for a breath of fresh air. The squat, grim little_Viking_ was speeding across Notre Dame Bay, with a wide, frothy wakebehind her, and the water curling from her bows. She was for allthe world like a man making haste to business in the morning, theappointment being, in this case, off a low, gray coast, which thelifting haze was but then disclosing.

  It was broad day: the sea was quiet, the sun shining brightly, the skya cloudless blue; a fading breeze ruffled the water, and the ripplesflashed in the sunlight. Dead ahead and far away, where the gray ofthe coast rocks shaded to the blue of the sea, little puffs of spraywere drifting off with the light wind, like the puff of smoke from adistant rifle: they broke and drifted and vanished.

  From time to time mirror-flashes of light--swift little flashes--struckBilly's eyes and darted away. Puff after puff of spray, flash afterflash of light: the far-off sea seemed to be alive with the quarry. Butwhere was the thrilling old cry of "There she blows!" or its Norwegianequivalent? The lookout had but spoken a quiet word to the captain,who, in turn, had spoken a quiet word to the steersman.

  "W'ales," said the captain, whose English had its limitations. "Ho--faroff!"