Fighting the Whales, R. M. Ballantyne [romantic novels in english txt] 📗

sea, and we were compelled to slack the fires. This was all the harm it did to us, however, for although the breeze was stiffish, it was nothing like a gale.

As the captain and the first mate walked the quarter-deck together, I heard the former say to the latter, "I think we had as well take in a reef in the topsails. All hereabouts the fishing-ground is good, we don't need to carry on."

The order was given to reduce sail, and the men lay out on the topsail yards. I noticed that my friend Fred Borders was the first man to spring up the shrouds and lay out on the main-topsail yard. It was so dark that I could scarcely see the masts. While I was gazing up, I thought I observed a dark object drop from the yard; at the same moment there was a loud shriek, followed by a plunge in the sea. This was succeeded by the sudden cry, "man overboard!" and instantly the whole ship was in an uproar.

No one who has not heard that cry can understand the dreadful feelings that are raised in the human breast by it. My heart at first seemed to leap into my mouth and almost choke me. Then a terrible fear, which I cannot describe, shot through me, when I thought it might be my comrade Fred Borders. But these thoughts and feelings passed like lightning—in a far shorter time than it takes to write them down. The shriek was still ringing in my ears when the captain roared—

"Down your helm! stand by to lower away the boats."

At the same moment he seized a light hen-coop and tossed it overboard, and the mate did the same with an oar in the twinkling of an eye. Almost without knowing what I did, or why I did it, I seized a great mass of oakum and rubbish that lay on the deck saturated with oil, I thrust it into the embers of the fire in the try-works, and hurled it blazing into the sea.

"HURLED IT BLAZING INTO THE SEA"

The ship's head was thrown into the wind, and we were brought to as quickly as possible. A gleam of hope arose within me on observing that the mass I had thrown overboard continued still to burn; but when I saw how quickly it went astern, notwithstanding our vigorous efforts to stop the ship, my heart began to sink, and when, a few moments after, the light suddenly disappeared, despair seized upon me, and I gave my friend up for lost.

At that moment, strange to say, thoughts of my mother came into my mind, I remembered her words, "Call upon the Lord, my dear boy, when you are in trouble." Although I had given but little heed to prayer, or to my Maker, up to that time, I did pray, then and there, most earnestly that my messmate might be saved. I cannot say that I had much hope that my prayer would be answered—indeed I think I had none,—still, the mere act of crying in my distress to the Almighty afforded me a little relief, and it was with a good deal of energy that I threw myself into the first boat that was lowered, and pulled at the oar as if my own life depended on it.

A lantern had been fastened to the end of an oar and set up in the boat, and by its faint light I could see that the men looked very grave. Tom Lokins was steering, and I sat near him, pulling the aft oar.

"Do you think we've any chance, Tom?" said I.

A shake of the head was his only reply.

"It must have been here away," said the mate, who stood up in the bow with a coil of rope at his feet, and a boat-hook in his hand. "Hold on, lads, did anyone hear a cry?"

No one answered. We all ceased pulling, and listened intently; but the noise of the waves and the whistling of the winds were all the sounds we heard.

"What's that floating on the water?" said one of the men, suddenly.

"Where away?" cried everyone eagerly.

"Right off the lee-bow—there, don't you see it?"

At that moment a faint cry came floating over the black water, and died away in the breeze.

The single word "Hurrah!" burst from our throats with all the power of our lungs, and we bent to our oars till we wellnigh tore the rollicks out of the boat.

"Hold hard! stern all!" roared the mate, as we went flying down to leeward, and almost ran over the hen-coop, to which a human form was seen to be clinging with the tenacity of a drowning man. We had swept down so quickly, that we shot past it. In an agony of fear lest my friend should be again lost in the darkness, I leaped up and sprang into the sea. Tom Lokins, however, had noticed what I was about; he seized me by the collar of my jacket just as I reached the water, and held me with a grip like a vice till one of the men came to his assistance, and dragged me back into the boat. In a few moments more we reached the hen-coop, and Fred was saved!

He was half dead with cold and exhaustion, poor fellow, but in a few minutes he began to recover, and before we reached the ship he could speak. His first words were to thank God for his deliverance. Then he added:

"And, thanks to the man that flung that light overboard. I should have gone down but for that. It showed me where the hen-coop was."

I cannot describe the feeling of joy that filled my heart when he said this.

"Aye, who wos it that throw'd that fire overboard?" enquired one of the men.

"Don't know," replied another, "I think it wos the cap'n."

"You'll find that out when we get aboard," cried the mate; "pull away, lads."

In five minutes Fred Borders was passed up the side and taken down below. In two minutes more we had him stripped naked, rubbed dry, wrapped in hot blankets, and set down on one of the lockers, with a hot brick at his feet, and a stiff can of hot rum and water in his hand.

CHAPTER VI THE WHALE—FIGHTING BULLS, ETC.

As the reader may, perhaps, have been asking a few questions about the whale in his own mind, I shall try to answer them, by telling a few things concerning that creature which, I think, are worth knowing.

In the first place, the whale is not a fish! I have applied that name to it, no doubt, because it is the custom to do so; but there are great differences between the whales and the fishes. The mere fact that the whale lives in water is not sufficient to prove it to be a fish. The frog lives very much in water—he is born in the water, and, when very young, he lives in it altogether—would die, in fact, if he were taken out of it; yet a frog is not a fish.

The following are some of the differences existing between a whale and a fish:—The whale is a warm-blooded animal; the fish is cold-blooded. The whale brings forth its young alive; while most fishes lay eggs or spawn. Moreover, the fish lives entirely under water, but the whale cannot do so. He breathes air through enormous lungs, not gills. If you were to hold a whale's head under water for much longer than an hour, it would certainly be drowned; and this is the reason why it comes so frequently to the surface of the sea to take breath. Whales seldom stay more than an hour under water, and when they come up to breathe, they discharge the last breath they took through their nostrils or blowholes, mixed with large quantities of water which they have taken in while feeding. But the most remarkable point of difference between the whale and fishes of all kinds is, that it suckles its young.

The calf of one kind of whale is about fourteen feet long when it is born, and it weighs about a ton. The cow-whale usually brings forth only one calf at a time, and the manner in which she behaves to her gigantic baby shows that she is affected by feelings of anxiety and affection such as are never seen in fishes, which heartless creatures forsake their eggs when they are laid, and I am pretty sure they would not know their own children if they happened to meet with them.

The whale, on the contrary, takes care of her little one, gives it suck, and sports playfully with it in the waves; its enormous heart throbbing all the while, no doubt, with satisfaction.

I have heard of a whale which was once driven into shoal water with its calf and nearly stranded. The huge dam seemed to become anxious for the safety of her child, for she was seen to swim eagerly round it, embrace it with her fins, and roll it over in the waves, trying to make it follow her into deep water. But the calf was obstinate; it would not go, and the result was that the boat of a whaler pulled up and harpooned it. The poor little whale darted away like lightning on receiving the terrible iron, and ran out a hundred fathoms of line; but it was soon overhauled and killed. All this time the dam kept close to the side of its calf, and not until a harpoon was plunged into her own side would she move away. Two boats were after her. With a single rap of her tail she cut one of the boats in two, and then darted off. But in a short time she turned and came back. Her feelings of anxiety had returned, no doubt, after the first sting of pain was over, and she died at last close to the side of her young one.

There are various kinds of whales, but the two sorts that are most sought after are the common whale of the Greenland Seas, which is called the "right whale", and the sperm whale of the South Sea. Both kinds are found in the south; but the sperm whale never goes to the North Seas. Both kinds grow to an enormous size—sometimes to seventy feet in length, but there is considerable difference in their appearance, especially about the head. In a former chapter I have partly described the head of a right whale, which has whalebone instead of teeth, with its blowholes on the back of the head. The sperm whale has large white teeth in its lower jaw and none at all in the upper. It has only one blowhole, and that a little one, much farther forward on its head, so that sailors can tell, at a great distance, what kind of whales they see simply by their manner of spouting.

The most remarkable feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn square off, and this head is about one-third of its entire body.

The sperm whale feeds differently from the right whale. He seizes his prey with his powerful teeth, and lives, to a great extent, on large cuttle-fish. Some of them have been seen to vomit lumps of these cuttle-fish as long as a whale-boat. He is much fiercer, too, than the right whale, which almost always takes to flight when struck, but the sperm whale will sometimes turn on its foes and smash their boat with a blow of his blunt head or tail.

Fighting-whales, as they are called, are not uncommon. These are generally old bulls, which have become wise from experience, and give the whalers great trouble—sometimes carrying away several harpoons and lines. The lower jaw of one old bull of this kind was found to be sixteen feet long, and it had forty-eight teeth, some of them a foot long. A number of scars about his head showed that this fellow had been in the wars. When two bull-whales take to fighting, their great effort is to catch each other by the lower jaw, and, when locked together, they struggle with a degree of fury that cannot be described.

It is not often that the sperm whale actually attacks a ship; but there are