It was an awful thought. In sudden and uncontrollable anger my cousin had attempted to stab me when we had our unfortunate quarrel aboard the sloop; but this crime was far greater than his former attempt. He had deliberately planned my death.

And if Ham Mayberry, or any of my other friends, took the pains to look at the Wavecrest's mooring cable, they would know that the sloop had been cut adrift. The evidence lay in both pieces of the cable.

Perhaps, however, it would not be known—it might never be suspected, indeed—that I had been swept out to sea in the sloop. The mere fact that I had left my tender tied to the mooring buoy might not be understood. Beside, the tender might have been cut adrift, too. Or the gale might have done much havoc in Bolderhead Inlet. Other craft could easily have been strewn along the rocky shores, or carried—like the Wavecrest—out into the open sea.

The mystery of my disappearance might never be explained—until I returned home. And when would I get back? I did not like to think of this. I worried over the effect my disappearance would have upon my mother's mind. And, while I was absent, Mr. Chester Downes would have full swing.

Worried as I was because of my situation, here in the seemingly empty Atlantic, my greatest anxiety was for my mother. More and more had I come to fear the evil machinations of Mr. Chester Downes. While I had been on hand to defend mother from her brother-in-law—and defend her from her own innocent belief in him, as well!—I was but mildly disturbed. If worse came to worse, I could always write to Lawyer Hounsditch whom I believed would never see my mother cheated.

But now—and God only knew for how long a time—it was beyond my power to do a single thing toward guarding my mother from Chester Downes. How I wish I had taken the old attorney of the Darringford Estate into my confidence before this time!

These were some of my sad thoughts following the discovery of the severed cable. I remained in a very, very low state of mind indeed during that forenoon. The gale did not abate; nothing but the boisterous sea and the overcast sky could I see about me. Not even a seabird came to the dead whale. I was alone—stark alone.

At mid-afternoon, however, I sighted something to the southward. I had climbed to the top of the whale for a better observation and against the horizon I beheld a long ribbon of smoke—just a faint streak against the lighter colored clouds. I knew that a steamer was there; but she was far, far away, and would never sight the whale, or my fluttering signal.

I thought of all manner of curious plans to attract attention to my plight from a long distance over the sea. Fire was my main thought. I knew that no vessel—scarcely a mail-carrying steamship—would pass a fire at sea without investigation. Had I been a modern Munchausen I might have found some way of drawing a wick through the whale and setting fire to its blubber!

As it was, had I been likely to run short of burning fluid I surely would have endeavored to "try out" some of the blubber. I knew that, before the day of mineral oil—kerosene—people used whale oil almost altogether for lamps. But I was fortunately well supplied with oil, water and food. I might ward off starvation for a month; but I was not at all sure that I wished to exist so long under the then prevailing conditions.

But life is very sweet to us, and I suppose I should have clung to the last shred of mine had Fate intended me to remain in this abandoned state so long. This day and another night passed. I went to bed and slept well. The whale's carcass might roll over and crush my boat, or some other accident happen to the Wavecrest during my retirement. But I could do nothing to fend off Fate did I keep awake and had already made up my mind that I had little to fear.

As for the whale sinking again, that was impossible. It may have sunk after being killed; but putrefaction had set in within the carcass and the gases which had thereby formed would keep the whale afloat until the fish and seabirds had stripped its bones, in great part at least.

With the returning day the clouds broke. I had noted before arising that the gale was subsiding. The sun showed his face and I welcomed him enthusiastically. The sea did not subside however. I could not think of leaving my sure haven yet. It did not look exactly like settled weather but the sun shone warmly for part of that forenoon.

Before noon several screaming gulls had found the dead whale and were circling around it, gaining courage to attack. The presence of the sloop moored to it bothered them at first. But in a few hours there were other scavengers of the sea at hand which were afraid of nothing. I sighted the first ugly fin soon after eating my dinner. Then another, and another and another appeared, and soon the voracious sharks were tearing at the whale from beneath while the increasing number of seabirds were hovering and fighting above the carcass.

Both the finned and winged denizens of the sea became so fearless that I could have stroked the sides of the sharks with my hand or got upon the whale and knocked the birds over with a club. Blood as well as oil ran from the great carcass and the sea was soon streaked all around with foulness. A dreadful stench began to be apparent, too. The fetid gasses from the abdominal cavity of the dead creature were escaping.

But I could not afford to change my anchorage just for a bad smell! Anxious as I was to get home again, I dared not start for land yet awhile. I must wait for a fair wind and the promise of a spell of steady weather. I knew that by heading into the northwest I must reach the New England coast if I sailed far enough; but otherwise I was quite ignorant of my position. Having a nicely drawn chart in my chest did not help me in the least now, for I did not know my position and had no means of learning it had I been a navigator.

This day passed likewise and an uncertain, windy night was ushered in. I set my lantern again on the whale's back, the birds having become less troublesome; but determined to keep watch for part of the night, at least. To this end I rolled myself in my blanket and lay down on the bench at the stern. The clouds still fled across the skies, harried by the wind; and the wind itself fluctuated, wheeling around to various points of the compass within a short hour.

I fell asleep occasionally and finally, before dawn, descended into a heavy slumber. I don't know what awoke me. The wind was whining very strangely through the sloop's standing rigging. My oar had tumbled down and oar and lantern were in the sea. The birds had all disappeared, nor were the fins of the sharks visible. Off to the south'ard was a strange, copper colored bank of cloud. The east was streaked lividly, for it was all but sunrise.

I rose and stretched, yawning loudly. I suddenly felt a prickling sensation all over me. I knew that the air must be strongly impregnated with electricity. Despite the whining of the wind here beside the dead whale there seemed to have fallen a calm.

I scrambled up the side of the whale and turned to look northward. Glory! Within five miles was a bark, under full sail, coming down upon me—a vision of rescue that brought the stinging tear-drops to my eyes. I was saved.

I did not care for the oar and the lost lantern now. I stood there and waved the coat that I had dragged off at first sight of the vessel. I knew her company must see me. I was as positive of rescue as of anything in the world. The bark was flying before a stiff breeze, and it was head on to the whale. I could not be missed.

Although the on-coming ship sailed so proudly, however, the breeze that filled her canvas did not breathe upon my cheek. Nor was it the whining of that favoring wind I had heard since first opening my eyes. I swung about suddenly and looked to the south. Up from that direction rolled the copper colored cloud—and it seemed veritably to roll along the surface of the sea.

The sound came from this cloud. Before it the sea itself turned white. Far above, the upper reaches of the rolling mist seemed to writhe as though in travail of some great phenomenon. And it was so! Out of this mass of vapor I saw born within the hour the most remarkable of all sea-spells.

But at first my attention was divided between the tornado coming up from the south and the bark approaching from the north. Not at once did the favoring wind leave the craft. Where the dead whale lay seemed to be a belt of calm between the bark and the coming tornado. And this craft in which my hope was set was really a bark, by the way; I do not use the word poetically. Her fore and mainmasts were square rigged while her mizzen mast was rigged fore and aft like my little Wavecrest.

As I watched her I saw that her navigator had espied the coming tempest from the south and the crew began to swarm among the sails. She still came on at a spanking pace; but her canvas was reefed down rapidly until there was nothing left but the foretopsail, flying jib and the spanker. Soon these began to shake and then her fair wind left her entirely. She had reached the belt of calm in which the dead whale and my sloop still lay.

In my ears the savage voice from the cloud to the south'ard was now a roar. The remaining canvas on the bark was reefed down. She lay waiting for the tempest. I turned to descend from my rather slippery situation. I preferred to be in the sloop when the tempest struck us, for possibly I would be obliged to cast off from the dead mammal.

But before I could get off the whale the writhing cloud changed its appearance—and changed so rapidly that I was held spellbound. It was sweeping over the seas so close, it seemed that the topmasts of the bark could not have cleared it. Now whirling tongues of cloud shot downward while dozens of spiral columns of water leaped up to meet these gyrating tongues. Thus sucked up by the whirling cloud the waterspouts were formed, and dozens of them swept on across the sea beneath the hovering cloud.

As the cloud advanced the wind which accompanied it beat the waves flat. But they boiled about the waterspouts and the roaring sound increased rapidly. The heavens above and to the north and east grew dark. The rising sun seemed snuffed out. A vivid glare which was neither sunlight nor starlight accompanied the tempest as it swept on.

I trembled at the sight and as the seconds passed I grew more terrified—and for good reason. What would happen to me if any of those whirling columns of water and mist struck the dead whale? If they burst upon the drifting mammal where would I be? What would happen to the Wavecrest?

And then quite suddenly there came a change in the on-rushing tornado. Amid thunderous reports—like nothing so much as the explosions of great guns—the dozens of small spouts ran together, or were quenched as it might be, in one huge, whirling column of water which, swept on by the wind, charged down upon me as though aiming at my particular destruction.

I fell upon my knees and clung with both hands to the slot I had cut in the whale's blubber in to which to thrust the oar. I dug my fingers into the greasy flesh and hung on for dear life. I actually expected that the whale—and of course my sloop—would be overwhelmed.

The waterspout, traveling with the speed of an express train, bore down upon me. With it came the wind, roaring deafeningly. I lost all other sound, with such enormous confusion the tornado swept upon me. The whale rolled as though it had come to sudden life again.

Over and over it canted. I know my sloop was lifted completely out of the sea. The waterspout whirled past—within three cable-lengths of the dead leviathan,—and the tempest shrieked after. The whale rolled back. I slid down the curve of the carcass and dropped into my plunging sloop. I feared to remain longer near the dead whale, but cast off both at bow and stern, and let the sea carry me some yards from the heaving, rolling carcass.

And then I could once more see the waterspout. It was still careening over the sea, its general direction being nor'west; but it whirled so that it was quite impossible to be sure of its exact direction.

However, of one thing I was confident. The sailing vessel which I had so joyfully discovered an hour ago, lay in the track of the waterspout. She lay still becalmed and if the spout threatened to board her, there would be no possible chance of the vessel's escaping destruction.



CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF BOUND FOR SOUTHERN SEAS

My little sloop pitched so abominably that I could not stand upright, but fell into her sternsheets and there clung to the tiller as she swept along in the wake of the tornado. The waves did not break about the Wavecrest, for she was still within the charmed circle of oily calmness supplied by the dead whale. At some distance, however, the waves were tossed about most tempestuously.

I could see the bark from bow to stern, for she lay broadside to me. When the draught from the south first struck her she went over slowly almost upon her beam-ends; but righted majestically and her helm being put over she slewed around so as to take the gale bow-on.

She mounted the first wave splendidly and I saw her crew gathered forward in her bows. They seemed to be at work on something and there was a vast amount of running back and forth upon her deck. Meanwhile the waterspout, whirling like a dervish, bore down upon the bark.

The great column of water passed between me and the bark, then swung around and rushed down upon the craft in a way to threaten its complete extinction. I expected nothing more than to see the bark borne down and sunk under the weight of the bursting waterspout.

But when it was still several cable-lengths from the bark I saw the group upon her forward deck separate, and a long cannon was revealed. Its muzzle was slewed a little over the port bow and the next instant it spoke. The explosion sharply echoed across the sea, audible to my ears despite the huge roaring of the waterspout.

The column of water, rushing down upon the bark, was cut in twain by the ball from the gun. The connection 'twixt the whirling cloud and the whirling water was actually severed by it. Had the spout swept aboard the bark the great ship would have scarcely escaped complete wreck. As it was, the revolving water poured down into the ocean with the noise of a cascade, beating the sea to foam for yards and yards around, but without doing the slightest damage either to the bark, or to my little sloop.

The tornado tore into the north, smaller spouts leaping up and twirling in their mad dance, but none forming the threatening aspect of that which the bark's gun had burst. In half an hour the sun was out and I dared spread a whisp of sail and ran down to hail the bark.

I saw the crew crowding to the rail. There was a large number for even a sailing vessel of these times, and I more than half suspected the nature of her business before a rope ladder was let down to me and I scrambled up the tall side of the craft with the bight of my sloop's painter over my shoulder and saw the "nests" of boats stowed amidships.

"I say, young fellow!" was the greeting I received from a smart looking youngster—not much older than myself—who welcomed me at the rail "is that your whale?"

"If 'findings is keepings' it is surely mine," I said. "But I didn't kill it, and now I've got a leg over your rail I'll give you all my title and share in the beast."

"Good luck, boys!" rumbled a bewhiskered old barnacle who stood behind the young officer of the bark, "We've struck ile before we're a week out o' Bedford."

As I say, without these words I could have been sure that the bark was a whaler. She was the Scarboro Captain Hiram Rogers, and just beginning her voyage for the South Seas. The Greenland, or right whale, is no longer plentiful, but the cachelot and other species have become wonderfully common of late years. This fact has drawn capital to the business of whaling once more, and although steam has for the most part supplanted sails, and the gun and explosive bullet serve the office formerly held by the harpoon and the lance, more than a few of the old whale-fishing fleet have come into their own again.

For the Scarboro was built in the thirties of the last century; but so well did those old Yankee boat builders construct the barks meant for the fishing trade—for they were expected to stand many a tight squeeze in the ice as well as a possible head-on collision with a mad whale—that their length of life, and of usefulness, is phenomenal. At least, the Scarboro looked to be a most staunch and seaworthy craft.

The young fellow who had hailed me was Second Mate Gibson, nephew of the captain and, I very soon discovered, possessed of little more practical knowledge of sea-going and seamanship than myself. But he was a brisk, cheerful, educated fellow and being merely the captain's lieutenant over the watch got along very well. He expected to study navigation with his uncle and be turned off a full-fledged mate, with a certificate, on his return from this whaling voyage.

However, these facts I learned later. Just now I was only anxious to know what was to be done with me, and if there was a likelihood of the captain of the Scarboro touching at any port from which I might make a quick passage home. This last was the uppermost thought in my mind when I followed Ben Gibson below to see the captain.

Captain Rogers was a lanky man with a sandy beard and a quiet blue eye. He did not look as though he ever had, or ever could, be hurried or disturbed. Had I been a Triton that had just come abroad I reckon he would have eyed me quite as calmly and listened as tranquilly to my story. But Gibson was so impatient (as I could easily see) that I made the story brief. He burst out with:

"Captain Rogers! aren't we going to get that whale? She's delivered into our hand, as ye might say. The men are eager for it, sir, but you haven't given orders to change our course."

"And I'm not likely to, Bennie," returned his uncle.

"But it's a waste of oil!" exclaimed the young fellow.

"And it would be a waste of time for us to stop for one miserable whale when we don't expect to break out our boats until we're well below the equator. We'd just make a mess of the old hooker and have to clean her up again."

Gibson was disappointed, and would have urged his desire further, but Captain Rogers turned to me:

"If we meet a homeward bound sailing vessel in good weather I'll put you aboard. Steamships won't stop for you. If you want to join my crew—you're a husky looking youngster—I'll fit you out and lot you a greenhorn's share. Best I can do for you. Is your sloop any good?"

"She's not started a plank, sir," I declared.

"Pass the word for the carpenter to take his gang and get the stick out of her, and hoist her aboard," Captain Rogers said to Gibson. "Then take this lad to breakfast and see that he gets a good one."

He turned me off rather cavalierly I thought. Of course, my situation appealed more strongly to me than it was likely to appeal to anybody else. But Captain Rogers did not seem to consider my being carried away, willy-nilly, into the Southern Seas, and on a voyage likely to last anywhere from eighteen months to three years—for the Scarboro was just out of New Bedford, as has been stated—the captain did not seem to consider, I say, what my state of mind might be. Of course, I was thankful that I had been picked up; yet if the weather settled I might have safely made my way back home in the Wavecrest. And it was easy to see that the skipper of the Scarboro considered the sloop his property in return for taking me aboard.

The lanky captain of the whale ship was not a person to argue with. I knew it would be useless to bandy words with him. Even his nephew plainly showed that he considered it wise to drop the matter of the dead whale right there and then—before the captain at least. He grumbled a bit about the loss of this first chance for oil when we went to breakfast, however. Apropos of which, and while we discussed the good breakfast that was put before us, Ben Gibson repeated for my delectation the famous whaling story—a classic in its way—wherein the Yankee skipper and the Yankee mate differ as to the advisability of chasing a cachelot. Some version of this tale is known to every whaler and I preserve Ben's story, as he told it, imitating the Down East twang as well as I may:

"Forty-two days aout, an' not a drop o' ile in the tanks. I went for'ard. The lookaout he hailed. 'On deck, sir,' says he, 'thar she blaows.'

"I went aft. 'Cap'n Symes,' says I, 'thar she blaows; shall I lower?'

"Cap'n Symes he gin a look to wind'ard. 'Mr. Symes,' says he, ('Twas cur'ous, his name was Cap'n Symes, an' my name was Mister Symes, but we warn't neither kith nor kin), 'Mr. Symes,' says he, 'it's a-bloawin' right smart peart, an' I don't see fitten for to lower.'

"I went for'ard. The lookaout hailed again. 'On deck, sir,' says he, 'thar she blaows an' spouts.'

"I went aft. 'Cap'n Symes,' says I, 'thar she blaows an' spouts. Shall I lower?'

"Cap'n Symes he casts an eye aloft. 'Mr. Symes,' says he, 'it's a bloawin' right smart peart, and I don't see fitten for to lower.'

"I went for'ard. The lookaout he hailed again. 'On deck, sir,' says he, 'thar she blaows, an' spouts, an' breaches.'

"I went aft. 'Cap'n Symes,' says I, 'thar she bloaws, an' spouts, an' breaches. Shall I lower?'

"Cap'n Symes he took a look at the clouds that was a-scuddin' acrosst. 'Mr. Symes,' says he, 'it's a-bloawin' right smart peart, an' I don't see fitten for to lower.'

"I went for'ard. The lookaout he hailed again. 'On deck, sir,' says he, 'thar she blaows, an' spouts, an' breaches, an' it's a right smart sperm, too.'

"I went aft. 'Cap'n Symes,' says I, 'thar she bloaws, an' spouts, an' breaches, an' its a right smart sperm-whale, too. Shall I lower?'

"Cap'n Symes, he gin a last look at the weather. 'Mr. Symes,' says he, 'it's a-bloawin' right smart peart, and I don't see fitten for to lower, still—if you're so gol-darned sot on lowerin', you can lower and be hanged to you.'

"I went for'ard and sings aout for volunteers, an' the boys jest tumbled over each other into the boat. We got the whale, and as I was a-swarmin' over the side, thar stood Cap'n Symes with tears in his eyes.

"'Mr. Symes,' says he, 'forty years,' says he, 'I've sailed the seas,' says he, 'man an' boy, man an' boy, an' in all that time I never see no mate to compare with you,' says he. 'Mr. Symes,' says he, 'you're the Jim Dandyest mate as ever I sailed shipmates with,' says he. 'Mr. Symes,' says he, 'daown in my cabin in the starboard locker aft,' says he, 'you'll find some prime Havana seegars, and the best o' Lawrence's aould Medford New England rum,' says he. 'That best o' Lawrence's aould Medford New England rum,' says he, 'an' them prime Havana seegars,' says he, 'is yourn for the rest of the v'y'ge.'

"'Cap'n Symes,' says I, 'you can take them prime Havana seegars an' that best o' Lawrence's aould Medford New England rum,' says I, 'an' stick 'em overboard as fur as I'm consarned. All I asks is common sea-vility; an' that o' the gol-darndest commonest kind!'"

Ben told me this story while he ate. He was the liveliest kind of a companion. I liked him immensely from the start, and the longer I knew him the better I liked him. This was his first deep sea voyage, but he had been looking forward to it ever since he was in petticoats—unlike myself, who had only longed for the sea but knew I probably would never be allowed to follow my bent.

Now, it seemed, Fate had flung me right into the life I had so longed for. Had it not been for mother and the fears I felt for her in the mesh of Chester Downes' web, I should have welcomed this chance that had put me aboard the whaling bark Scarboro.

"And she's a fine old craft," declared the young second mate. "Maybe she's a bit tender in her bends, but she's sailed in every quarter of the globe and has brought home many a cargo of oil. We all own shares in her—in the bark herself, I mean—we Rogerses and Gibsons. I've a twentieth part myself in pickle against the time I'm twenty-one," and he laughed, meaning that his guardian held that investment for him—and a very good slice of fortune his holdings in the old Scarboro proved to be, at the end of the voyage.

But now we were at the beginning of it—all the romance and adventure was ahead of us. Before noon I was not sorry to be aboard of the bigger craft and looked with equanimity upon my own bonny sloop stowed amidships. The wind had wheeled again and coming abaft, the bark shot on into the southward, trying to outrun the gale. Had I not been picked up as I was I might have been swamped in the Wavecrest.

For a week, or more, we ran steadily toward the tropics, and in all that time we passed—and that distantly—but two steam vessels and only one sailing craft. There was no chance for me to get home. I had to possess my soul with such patience as I could, while the old Scarboro bore me swiftly away toward the Southern Seas.



CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH TOM ANDERLY RELATES A STORY THAT AROUSES MY INTEREST

Captain Rogers was not a harsh man, but he was a stern disciplinarian. That he could not change the course of his ship to land me in some port, or to put me aboard a homeward bound vessel, is not to be wondered at. He had both his owners and his crew to think of. I was thankful, when I saw the week's weather that followed my boarding the Scarboro, that I had been saved from further battling with the elements in the sloop.

Ben Gibson advised me to write fully of my situation and prospects and have the letter, or letters, ready to put aboard any mail-carrying ship we might meet. A steamship bound for the Cape of Good Hope, even, would get a letter to Bolderhead, via London, before I could get back myself from any South American port that the Scarboro might be obliged to touch at.

I knew, however, that the whaling bark was not likely to touch at any port unless she suffered seriously from the gales. Whaling skippers are not likely to trust their crews in port, for the possible three year term of shipment stretches out into an unendurable vista in the mind of the imprisoned sailor.

For that is what a sailor is—a prisoner. As the great Samuel Johnson declared, a sailor is worse off than a man in jail, for the sailor is not only a prisoner, but he is in danger all of the time! However, the prospect of the danger and hardship of the seafarer's life had never troubled me. I must admit that I was delighted to turn to with the captain's watch (that was Ben Gibson's watch) and take up the duties of a foremast hand upon the Scarboro. I wrote the letters as I was advised. I wrote to my mother, of course, to Ham Mayberry, and last of all, and more particularly, to Lawyer Hounsditch.

To the latter gentleman I explained all I feared regarding Mr. Chester Downes and his machinations. To Ham I told the particulars of my having been swept out to sea and instructed him to find my mooring rope and save it, with its cut end for evidence; and if possible to learn who had helped Paul Downes, my cousin, cut me adrift and nail me in the cabin of the Wavecrest. To my mother I wrote cheerfully and asked her to have money sent me at Buenos Ayres, as that might be a port the Scarboro would touch at, or a port I could reach if I left the whaleship.

I cannot say that I was continually worried by my state aboard the whaler. What boy would not have delighted in being thus thrust into the midst of the very life and work he had so longed to follow? I could not but feel that it was meant for me to be a sailor, after all.

The Webbs had been seafaring folk, time out of mind. My father's father had tried to keep his own son off the water by giving him a college education and making a doctor of him. But the moment my father was sure of his sheepskin, he had looked about for a chance to go as surgeon on a deep water ship, and had gone voyage after voyage until his marriage.

Inside of a fortnight Captain Rogers had complimented me on my work and manner, and Mr. Robbins, the mate, said I was worth my salt-horse and hardbread. Of course while on duty Ben Gibson, the young second mate, and I must of necessity hold to "quarterdeck etiquette;" he was "Mr. Gibson" and I was "Webb." We were punctilious indeed about these niceties of address. Off duty, however, we were two boys together, and rather inclined to sky-lark.

The other close friend that I made aboard the Scarboro during the first few days of the voyage, was old Tom Anderly. He was the bewhiskered old barnacle who had welcomed the possibility of getting oil in the bark's tanks from the dead whale, when I had first come aboard.

Anderly was a boat-steerer, an old sea dog who had sailed oft and again with the skipper, and who had lanced more whales than any other half dozen men aboard. Being in old Tom's watch I grew soon familiar with him; and from the beginning I saw that the old seaman took more than a common interest in me.

The old man was full of stories of whale fishing and other experiences at sea. But it was not his fund of information, or his tales, that first of all interested me in Tom Anderly. I had told nobody—not even Ben Gibson—about the actual event of my being swept out to sea from Bolderhead, nor had I said a word about my father. The fact that he had been a sea-going physician would not help me hold my own with the crew of the Scarboro. At sea, according to the homely old saw, "every tub must stand on its own bottom."

"So you come from Bolderhead, do you?" quoth Tom to me, one day when we were lounging together forward of the capstan, and he was mending his pipe.

"That's where we live in the summer," I admitted.

"Jest summer visitors, are ye?"

"Well, my mother has a house there."

"Yes. Ye ain't a native, though, eh?" and before I could reply to this, he continued: "I been studying about Bolderhead ever since you come aboard. There was something curious happened at Bolderhead—or just off the inlet—and it's all come back to me now."

"What was it?" I asked, idly.

"Well, it's quite a yarn," he said, wagging his head. "I was running in the old hooker, Sally Smith, from Portland to New York. She carted stone. There warn't but five of us aboard, includin' the cap'n and the cook. But our freight warn't perishable," and he chuckled, "so speed didn't enter into our calculations. One day there come up a smother of fog as we was just off Bolderhead Neck. We'd run some in-shore. It fell a dead calm—one o' them still, creepy times when you can hear sheep bells and dinner horns for miles and miles.

"Well, sir! we lay there in this smother of fog and all of a suddent we heard somebody hootin'. Cap he halloaed back. 'Blow yer scare!' sings out the same faint voice. 'Keep it blowin'.'

"'There's somebody out yon tryin' to make the Sally,' says the Cap'n. I stepped on the tread of the siren and kept her blattin' now and then and, after some minutes, we heard a splashin' alongside and there was a man swimming in the sea."

"He had swum out from shore?" I asked, just to keep the conversation going. I wasn't really interested.

"No. His boat had begun leaking badly. It was too heavy to turn over, and before it sank he slipped into the sea and made for us. He had seen us before the fog shut down, and knew that we were becalmed. He'd just tied his shoes about his neck by the lacings and swum out with every rag of clothes on him—'cept his hat."

"And why did he swim for your craft instead of to shore?"

"Said he was nearer the Sally when his boat took in so much water. And the tide was running out, no doubt. But it always did seem queer to me," continued Tom.

"What was queer?" I asked the question without the slightest eagerness—indeed, I really was not interested much in what the old sailor was saying.

"Queer that such a smart-appearin', intelligent gent should have got himself in such a fix."

"As how?"

"To set sail in such a leaky old tub."

"Oh!"

"And then, when he found she was sinking under him not to make for the shore."

"What became of him?" I asked.

"He went to New York with us. There he stepped ashore and I ain't never seen him since—and only heard of him once, an' that was ten years or so afterward——"

"Hullo!" I cried, suddenly waking up. "When did all this happen, Tom?"

"When did what happen?"

"This man swimming aboard your schooner?"

"Why, nigh as I can remember, it must be fourteen or fifteen years ago—come next spring. It was in April, after the weather was right smart warm. Otherwise he wouldn't have swum so far, I bet ye!"

My voice, I knew, had suddenly become husky. I was startled, though I don't know why I should have felt so strangely as I reviewed this tale he had told.

"What was his name, Tom?" I asked.

"The name of the feller I was tellin' you of?"

"Yes."

"Carver."

"How d'you know it was?"

"Why, he said so!" exclaimed Tom. "A man ought to know his own name, oughtn't he?"

"He should—yes."

"Well!"

"But did he have any way of proving his name to be Carver?"

"Pshaw! the Cap'n never axed him to prove it. Why for should he lie about it? He worked his way to New York and all he got was his grub for it. I let him have an old pilot coat of mine, he having only a thin jacket on him. He agreed to pay me two dollars for it. And he was jest as honest as they make 'em."

"He paid you?"

"He sartinly did," said old Tom, wagging his head. "A feller who would be as good as his word in that particular wouldn't lie about his name, would he?"

"You said you heard from him ten years after?" I asked, without trying to answer Tom's query.

"Well—yes—it was ten years. But I guess the letter had been lying there in the office of Radnor & Blunt—them's the folks we dealt with on the Sally Smith—for a long time. I had left the Sally the year after and only just by chance went into the office when I was in New York. The chief clerk he passed me over a letter. In it was a two-dollar bill and a line saying it was for the coat."

"And it had been there waiting for you for some time?"

"'Twas as yellow as saffron. They didn't know where I lived when I was to home. And I had been 'round the world in the Scarboro, too."

"And the letter was from Bolderhead?" I asked, slowly.

"No. That was the funny part of it," said Tom.

I awoke again and once more felt a thrill of excitement in my veins. I watched the old fellow jealously.

"Didn't the man—this Carver—belong in Bolderhead?"

"So I supposed. But the letter come from foreign parts."

"Where?" I asked.

"'Twas from Santiago, Chili."

"Then he had not gone back to Bolderhead?" I stammered.

"Bless ye, lad! how do I know? I only know he sent the money from Chili. He was something of a mystery, that feller, I allow. Ever heard tell of him in Bolderhead? Are there any Carvers there?"

"It's a mighty small town along the New England coast in which there are no Carvers," I replied.

"Now, ain't that a fact? They're a spraddled out family, I do allow," said Tom.

"What did this man look like?" I asked, and I was still eager—I could scarcely have told why.

There was an enlarged crayon picture of my father in my bedroom at home. When he died my mother only had a cheap little tintype of him. I don't suppose the crayon portrait looked much like Dr. Webb. Certainly there was little in Tom Anderly's description to connect the strange man rescued out of the sea with the portrait of my father. Yet the circumstances, the time of the happening, and the suspicions that had been roused in my mind by Paul Downes and his father, all dovetailed together and troubled me.

Even Ham Mayberry, who scoffed at the idea that my father had made way with himself, admitted that had Dr. Webb lived my mother and I could never have enjoyed Grandfather Darringford's money. I could never believe that my father had been wicked enough to commit suicide. But, suppose he had merely slipped away from us—gone out of our lives entirely—with the intention of putting his wife and child in a prosperous position?

It was romantic, I suppose. To the perfectly sane and hard-headed such a suspicion would seem utterly ridiculous. But the longer I thought over Tom Anderly's story—the more I allowed my imagination to roam—the more possible the idea seemed. Ham had said my father was not a money-making man. He was in financial difficulties, too. Grandfather had died and there was a heap of money just beyond my mother's grasp. My father had become a stumbling-block in her path—in my path. He it was who kept us from enjoying wealth.

The cruelty of my grandfather in arranging such a situation filled me with anger when I contemplated it. What could my father think but that, if he were out of the way, it would be far, far better for his wife and child?

I could not believe, for an instant, that Dr. Webb would have committed the crime of self-destruction. But in my then romantic state of mind, what more easily believed than that he had deliberately removed himself out of our lives—and in a way to make it appear that he was dead?

As we did, he knew we would at once enter into the enjoyment of the wealth left by old Mr. Darringford. There would be no material suffering caused by his dropping out of sight. I faced the matter with more coolness and a better understanding than most boys of my age possess, because of my knowing my mother's nature so well. Take my own sudden disappearance, for instance. I knew well she would be quite overwhelmed at first; but if good Dr. Eldridge brought her out of it all right, and she had somebody to turn to and depend upon for comfort and encouragement, she would sustain my mysterious absence very well indeed.

And my father must have known her character much better than I did! Undoubtedly it had been very hard for mother to endure the cramped circumstances of those first two years of her married life. It must have been a great deal harder for Dr. Webb to bear it, knowing that she suffered for lack of the luxuries and ease to which she had been used.

I could imagine that the situation when my grandfather died and left his peculiar will, would have pretty near maddened Dr. Webb. It would not be strange if he contemplated self-destruction as a means of putting my mother and myself positively beyond the reach of poverty. He had rowed out to White Rock. He had left the old watch—I had the heirloom in my pocket now—for the boy who was yet to grow up and bear his name. The fog and the Sally Smith had appeared together and offered him means of escape.

It would be fifteen years the coming spring that my father had disappeared. Tom Anderly had hit the time near enough. Had there been any man named Carver who had suffered such an accident off Bolderhead Neck as the old seaman told of, I would have heard the particulars, knocking about among the Bolderhead docks as I had for years.

The story seemed conclusive. I had never for a moment believed that my father had wickedly made way with himself. But that he was alive—that he had gone out into the world, possibly with the hope of finding a fortune and sometime coming back to mother and me with a pocketful of money—Yes! I could believe that, and I did believe it with all my heart!



CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH I HEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME THE WHALER'S BATTLE-CRY

So impressed was I by the imaginings suggested by Tom Anderly's story, that I opened my letter to old Ham Mayberry and asked him if he had ever heard of a man named Carver who had gone through the experiences Tom had related of the man who had swum to the Sally Smith from the direction of Bolderhead Neck?

It was the very next day, and a fortnight after I had boarded the whaling bark, that I got a chance to send off the letters. The wind lulled and we crossed the course of a steamship hailing from Baltimore and touching on the West Coast of Africa; Captain Rogers sent the letters aboard the steamship. There was no use in my trying to get passage on her, however; I would have gained nothing by such a move.

"Now your letters will be picked up by a London, or Lisbon-bound steamer and it won't be two months before your folks will know all about you," Ben Gibson said. "If you'd had to depend upon the post-box in the Straits of Magellan, for instance, it might be six months before Bolderhead folk would ever know what had become of you."

I must confess that every day I was becoming more and more enamored of this life at sea. We had had little fair weather and were kept busy making sail and then reefing again, or repairing the small damages made by the gale. Captain Rogers was not the man to lay hove to in any fair breeze. We outran the bad weather before we crossed the line and then the lookout went to the masthead and from that time on, as long as I was with the Scarboro, the crowsnest was never empty by day.

For we had come into those regions of the South Atlantic where schools of the big mammals for which we hunted might be at any time come upon, especially at this season of the year. The gale having left us, the weather was charming. While winter was threatening New England we were in the latitude of perpetual summer, and as long as the trade wind blew we did not suffer from the heat.

The Scarboro carried crew enough to put out six boats at a time and still leave a boatkeeper and cook aboard. As a usual thing, however, only four boats were expected to be out at once—the captain's, Ben Gibson's (with whom Tom Anderly went as boat-steerer and would really be in charge until Ben learned the ropes) the mate's boat, and Bill Rudd, the carpenter's, boat. The gun forward in the Scarboro's bows, however, was there for a purpose, too, as I found out on the first day we sighted a whale.

The man in the crowsnest suddenly hailed the deck, when Mr. Gibson was in charge:

"On deck, sir!" he sang out, with such eagerness that the watch came instantly to attention.

"Well, sir?" cried Ben.

"Ah-h blows! Again, sir!"

"Pass the word for Cap'n Rogers, Webb," the second mate said to me, and grabbing his glasses he started up the backstays to see the sight. Some of the hands sprang into the rigging, too, and soon the whaler's battle-cry rang through the ship:

"Ah-h blows! And spouts!"

Captain Rogers was on deck in a moment. He ran up after Ben Gibson and took an earnest peek through the glasses himself. Then he dropped down to the quarter and said, but with satisfaction:

"Only one fish in sight. May be more ahead. Perhaps it's a she with a calf and has got behind the school. We'll see. Now, boys! tumble up and let's get the rags on her."

We went at the sails with a will and for the first time I saw every yard of canvas the Scarboro could set flung to the breeze. The old bark began to hustle. She was heavy and she could do no fancy sailing; but having the wind with her she rushed down upon the lone whale like a steamship. Soon we could see the undulating black hump of the whale from the deck.

We saw an occasional spurt of water, or mist, from its blow-holes. By and by it breached and was out of sight for a short time. When it came up again it was still tail-end to the Scarboro and not half a mile away. There was no other whale in sight; but this was a big fellow—a right whale, or baleener. After coming up it lay quietly on the water, or moving ahead very slowly.

The men were eager to get after it in the boats; but Captain Rogers knew a better way than that to attack a lone whale. We reefed down again and left little canvas exposed while the Scarboro kept on her tack under the momentum she had already gathered. The captain went forward where the gun had been made ready. He swung it about on its pivot and got the range of the whale.

At this small distance the huge mammal looked like a cigar-shaped piece of smooth, shiny slate-colored India-rubber—no longer black. Four or five feet of its diameter and forty feet or more of its length showed like a mound in the smooth water, and the body alternately rose and dipped as the whale swam slowly along. It was doubtless feeding on the tiny marine creatures which are the sole food of the right whale. It took great "gulps" of sea water into its cavernous mouth, water which it strained out through its curtain of baleen, swallowing only the tiny fish down a gullet so small that it would not admit a man's fist.

The Scarboro was approaching it from behind and at an angle, so that its course and ours made the sides of a V. Captain Rogers followed the course of the whale alertly, swinging the muzzle of the cannon with skill. Most of the crew were grouped behind him in anxious expectancy.

Suddenly I felt a touch upon my arm. It was Tom Anderly. He was pointing silently over the port bow. There, a couple of miles away, I judged, several columns of mist were spouting into the air. There was the school!

But I turned to view the nearby mammoth again just as the gun spoke. I saw a hideous, crimson zigzag gash on the broad side of the whale, I heard the rumbling roar of the time-bomb at the point of the harpoon exploding in the whale's vitals.

Instantly the whole crew were in a pandemonium of excitement; but the captain's shrill orders were obeyed like clockwork. I felt the blow of the great bark give a convulsive jerk. The whale had gone straight downward and the cable attached to the harpoon shot over the bow so fast that the eye could not follow its course. Where the hemp touched the rail a column of smoke arose. Two men sprang with buckets to dip up the sea-water and pour it upon the shrieking line. The windlass spun around like a boy's top.

Coil after coil of the rope leaped into nothingness. Had there been a big express locomotive hitched to that line, and going at full speed, I do not think the line would have paid out any faster!

At last the windlass ceased to spin. The whale had either touched bottom, or had descended as far as it could. We had already laid our mainsail aback and as the line lay slack upon the water, Captain Rogers motioned to the men at the windlass to wind in. It was like playing a fish at the end of a line and reel.

Those next few moments were breathless ones for all hands. Suddenly the sea parted right off the port bow, and not half a cable's length ahead. Up, and up the gigantic creature rose—up, up, up till it towered fifteen feet above the Scarboro's rail!

Then it turned a somersault, beating the sea to waves like the boiling of a cauldron. It rose again, churning the sea with its tail, and then raising the caudal fin for twenty feet, or more, and slapping it down upon the water with a shock like the report of a big gun—aye, like a thunder-clap!

Then the great beast whirled round and round—it seemed seeking for the thing that had so hurt it. We watched the struggle of the leviathan with pop-eyed expectation—especially the young second mate and myself, for we were the only real greenhorns aboard the Scarboro. The whale wrapped several lengths of the line about its body and then shot away into the southwest, away from the distant school. It swam so fast that it actually seemed to skip from wave to wave like a swallow.

When it reached the end of the slack there was a jerk that shook the bark from stem to stern. Then came the tug of war. There was no small whaleboat behind it, but a great, 195 ton bark, and this massive bulk the creature actually towed like a steam-tug towing a steamship.

The captain let more line out. Far out at the end of two miles of line the whale lashed about, and churned the sea, and blew blasts of vapor into the air. Then old Tom Anderly cried that it was spouting blood and we knew the end was near.

But the captain gave the whale half an hour in which to die before ordering the line wound inboard. The rest of the school had gone on steadily into the south and was still several miles away. We could not launch our boats for them, but gave our complete attention to the first kill.

As the whale felt the pull of the line it gave a single convulsive jump. But after waiting a moment or two, Captain Rogers commanded the windlass to be manned again. Slowly the line came in and, after a time, the huge, inert, flabby body floated, belly up, just off our bows.

The mate's boat was lowered and a chain was passed around the whale's body just forward of the tail. With this it was grappled to the Scarboro's side. I could see a dozen quarreling porpoises eating the tongue of the monster that had been, two hours before, alive and, to these scavengers, invincible.

There was a broad smile on every man's face, from Captain Rogers down the line. The first kill had been successful. Oil was in sight. But—as I soon found out—the real work of the voyage had begun as well.



CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH WE "STRIKE ON"

Belly uppermost the huge whale (its actual length was seventy-three feet) was fastened "stem and stern" along the starboard side of the Scarboro. The first operation of butchering a whale—if it be a baleener—is to secure the whalebone. This is a difficult job as I very soon saw. The thick, hard, horny substance must be separated from the jaw; and it sometimes turns the edge of the axe like iron would.

When we had got the baleen inboard, however, the more disagreeable work of "flensing" began. A number of the men, with old Tom Anderly at their head, got upon the whale in spiked shoes and with blubber spades attacked the main carcass of the beast. The blubber was cut up into squares, weighing a ton or more each, the hook of the falls caught in one end, and then the blubber was "eased off" with the spades while those aboard hauled on the tackle, thus ripping the blubber from the layer of flesh beneath.

In handling a small whale, Tom told me, they would thus rip the blubber off in long strips, rolling the carcass over and over in the bights of the holding chains. For this one whale Captain Rogers did not see fit to start the fire under the donkey-engine amid ships, by which the blubber could have been raised inboard much easier.

The try-out caldrons were heated, however, and the blubber as it came inboard—like "sides" from a great hog—was hacked into pieces of two or three pounds each and thrown into the pots. Soon the deck of the bark, from bow to stern, was slippery with spilled oil, or bits of blubber. A thick, greasy smoke rolled away from the ship. It's flavor in the mouth was at first sickening. We got used to it.

"Hi, lad!" cried Tom Anderly, when I looked over the rail, "now you've got a taste of real whaler's souse—everything you put in your potato-trap for the rest of the v'y'ge will be flavored with whale-oil."

A whale will weigh about as many tons as it is feet long—in other words, this seventy-three foot whale weighed probably seventy ton and from the blubber we tried out thirty tons of oil—nearly half its weight in the tanks beside the baleen!

We had been sailing in the wake of the big school of whales we had spied when we killed the baleener. We came up with them again at mid-afternoon, and found that they were sperms. That was why the Mysticete we had killed the day before did not start to drag the Scarboro toward the school. The baleeners and the Denticete (toothed whales) do not mix in company, and are, indeed, seldom found in the same seas. The baleeners are usually found toward the Arctic or Antarctic regions, while the sperms and their ilk hold to the warm seas.

Captain Rogers might have run down to the school of cachelots and gunned for one of the beasts; but then the others would have been frightened away. The bark lay to upon a perfectly calm sea, and at a distance of about two miles from the school, and four boats were manned and shot away from the ship. The whales seemed to be asleep, or lying sunning themselves, upon the surface of the sea.

I was in Ben Gibson's boat, of which old Tom was steersman. He would handle the iron too, for as I have said, Ben was just as green in the actual practice of whalemanship as I was myself. We raced with the other boats for the nearest prize, which proved to be a husky bull, longer than the baleener we had killed.

I was bow oar, and I found that I could hold my own with the rest of the crew. Our stroke set a slapping pace and we bent to the work as though we were racing for the sport of it. Each crew desired to be first and have the credit of fleshing the iron in this monster. The water being so calm it proved to be a very pretty struggle. And all done so silently! The whale is sharp-eared and on a mill-pond sea like this, sounds carry far. We came up from behind the mammoth, and we were ahead of the other boats.

The captain, in the nearest boat, signaled us with his hand to strike on, while his boat rushed past for another of the sleeping monsters. Old Tom and the young second mate changed places swiftly and the old harpooner stood up poising the heavy iron and looking to see that the coils of the rope were free. With a nod Mr. Gibson ordered the oars brought inboard and he pulled in the long steering oar himself. The whaleboat shot close up to the whale's side. The body loomed beside us like the rolling hull of an unballasted ship.

With my face over my shoulder I watched old Tom poise the iron. When he swung it back the muscles of his shoulder and upper arm flexed like a pugilist's! He was a fit subject for a statue at that instant. Then he flung body and weapon forward, the latter left his hand smoothly, and the sabre-sharp point sunk deep in the yielding blubber.

"Back all!" gasped Ben Gibson, scarcely above his breath, so excited was he.

But we had expected the order and were ready for it. The oars went in with unanimity and the boat shot back, for a whaleboat is as sharp at one end as it is at the other.

The whale made no flurry, however. It was as though he lay stunned for half a minute—perhaps longer. Then he made up his mind what to do, and he did it with a promptness and speed that was amazing.

Like a spurred horse the whale started ahead. I declare, it seemed as though half his length came out of the sea at the first jump. The line whizzed over the bow as though it were tackled to a fast express.

"Pull!" yelled Ben and we laid to the oars so that when the line ran out the shock would not be so great. When the first line was all out and Tom bent on another we were rushing through the water like mad. We passed the captain's boat just after he had struck on himself and his kill had sounded.

"Go it, young man!" yelled Captain Rogers, standing up and waving his hat to his nephew, "you're going out of town faster than you'll come back."

All we could do in that double-ended boat was to sit still and hold tight. I candidly believe that we traveled at a speed of a mile minute. I had once been aboard of a turbine launch, and the black water was thrown up on either side of that whaleboat in a wave just as it had flowed away from the nose of the launch!

This wave seemed to be three feet higher than the gunwale of the boat and as black as ebony. Even Tom Anderly cast a glance at the boat-hatchet as though he contemplated cutting the taut line. Our eyes were blinded by the wind which seemed to be blowing a hurricane. Actually there was scarcely a breath stirring over the surface of the placid ocean.

Our locomotive went directly through the school. Its mates rolled placidly and eyed us as we shot by with wicked glance. But none of them followed the boat which continued to tear through the water with undiminished speed.

But after a time we found that we had company, and mighty unpleasant company, too. In the boiling wake of the whaleboat I could see a dozen triangular fins—the fins of the real tiger shark of the tropics. Not a nice spectacle to men in such a situation as ours. Secretly I was frightened, and I reckon even the oldest in the boat's crew felt serious.

The mad whale was taking us farther and farther away from the bark and our friends. Indeed, the Scarboro was wiped out of sight, it seemed, within a very few minutes, and the other three boats were lost behind us, too.

The runaway, however, did not continue straight ahead. Its speed did not seem to slacken in the least; but soon it began to circle around, finding itself without its mates.

"If the old feller don't put on brakes pretty soon the harpoon'll git so hot it'll melt the blubber and pull out," chuckled the stroke-oar.

It was the first word spoken that showed relief. There was a perceptible slackening of our speed. And the whale was "going back to town," as the captain had intimated.

"Get hold of that line, Webb, and stand ready to haul," said Mr. Gibson to me, taking the heavy whalegun from its covered beckets, after changing places again with old Tom.

"Now for it!" muttered the boat-steerer, gripping the eighteen-foot oar and craning forward eagerly. He was just as excited as the rest of us. I hauled in on the line, standing firmly braced just behind the young second mate. The whale had actually come to a stop and did not sound. We drew closer and closer.

"Jest a leetle be-aft the for'ard fin, sir!" whispered old Tom, excitedly.

Gibson grunted some reply and raised the gun, taking careful aim at the mountain of flesh about which the water swirled. A second or two of breathless suspense followed as, oars in hand, we waited the report of the gun.

A sharp report made me jump. Then came the dull explosion of the bomb-lance somewhere in the vitals of the whale.

"Stern all! stern all!" shouted Mr. Gibson, this time finding his voice.

The wounded whale flung itself completely out of the water. For a moment we could see daylight underneath the huge bulk and as we backed water with all our strength it did seem as though that convulsed, eighty barrel sperm must fall upon the boat and overwhelm it!



CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH THERE IS SOME INFORMATION AND MUCH EXCITEMENT

The young second officer's command needed no repetition. There was no temptation for us to linger under the monster. With a crash that seemed to make sea and air tremble, the great body struck the surface of the water.

The whaleboat dashed back just in time, and then rocked upon the waves as the dying whale rolled to and fro in his "flurry." Then, with a great puff, the creature rolled partially on his side, and the ocean thereabout became tinged with the blood thrown out of its blow-hole.

"Killed with one lance! killed with one lance!" yelled Second Mate Gibson.

But then he gripped his dignity again and sat down, giving commands in his ordinary tone. Old Tom stood up to glance about the sea-scape: "And now where's that thundering old hooker?" he demanded. "We'll have a fine time pulling this baby to her."

But that is what we had to do. We had had our "fun;" now we settled down to doggedly pulling the heavy oars, being divided into two watches, and saw the light of the Scarboro's trying-out works at midnight! The Captain and Mr. Rudd had both got small whales and one had been laid aboard each side of the bark. The crew were working like gnomes in a pantomime when we rowed sadly to the bark with our huge tow. How we worked! I never had been so tired in my life, and at the end of the second day when the oil from the three whales had been run into the tanks and the decks cleared up again, I could have fallen into my hammock and slept the clock around. But one never catches up one's sleep on a successful whaler, and the Scarboro certainly was proving good her name as a "lucky" craft.

Between Tom Anderly and Ben Gibson I learned a lot about whaling statistics—famous voyages, wonderful accidents to whaling crews "lucky strikes," and the like. And these facts, both curious and exciting, I stowed away in my mind for future reference. Despite the fact that steam vessels and the gun and explosive bullet have almost supplanted the old-fashioned manner of killing whales, the luck and pluck of half a century, or more, ago, counted for enough to offset these new methods.

The most extraordinary good-luck voyage ever made by an American whaler was that of the bark Envoy, belonging to the Brownells of New Bedford. She was built in 1826 and in the year 1847 she returned to her then home port in such a condition that the underwriters refused to insure her for another voyage. But Captain William C. Brownell and Captain W. T. Walker agreed to take a chance in the old hulk and she put to sea from New Bedford under Captain Walker on July 12, 1848. As fitted for sea the Envoy, for repairs, supplies and all, stood the two owners in the sum of $8,000, whereas a vessel that could be insured might have cost from $40,000 to $60,000.

She got around the Horn without falling apart and took on a cargo of oil at Wytootackie which her captain had previously purchased from a wrecked whaler and stored there. This oil she hobbled into Manila with and shipped it to London at a profit of $9,000. From Manila the Envoy went cruising in the North Pacific and in fifty-five days she took 2,800 barrels of whale-oil and 40,000 pounds of baleen. With this she returned to Manila and shipped the bone and 1,800 barrels of oil to London, the shipment yielding $37,500 net.

Again she went cruising and secured 2,500 barrels of oil and 35,000 pounds of bone, bringing both into San Francisco in 1851, where she disposed of the oil for $73,450 and shipped the bone to her home port where it brought $12,500. To complete the record of her good luck, San Francisco merchants offered $6,000 for the condemned old bark that had, in two years, or thereabout, brought to her owners and venturesome crew the sum of $138,450.

With the captain's share as one-seventeenth of the "lay" the skipper of the Envoy must have made $8,000. "There were common sailors on that ship that turned up a thousand dollars in pocket when they were paid off," said Ben Gibson, when we were discussing it. "The second mate, with his one-forty-fifth, cleaned up three thousand. Hope I'll do half as well in the same length of time with the Scarboro."

I learned that the largest catch brought into port by an American whaler, as the result of a single cruise, included 5,300 barrels of oil and 200 barrels of sperm, with 50,000 pounds of bone. It was taken in a voyage lasting only 28 months by the South America, of Providence, Captain R. N. Sowle. It sold for $89,000 in 1849, and the cost of ship and outfit was $40,000.

The Pioneer, of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, holds the medal for the largest sum realized from a single voyage. She left her home port on June 4, 1864, for Davis Strait and returned a year and three months later with a cargo of 1,391 barrels of oil and 22,650 pounds of bone, which sold at war-time prices for $150,000. The outfitting of this craft cost $35,000.

"Those are all great tales," quoth Tom Anderly, when we had marveled over these lucky voyages. "But how about the brig Emeline of New Bedford? She sailed on July 11, 1841 and in twenty-six months she returned home with how much ile d'you suppose?"

Ben and I gave it up. Some enormous sum, we supposed, was realized.

"Yah!" said Tom. "A fat lot. Twenty-six months and ten barrels of ile, and her skipper killed by a whale."

"Oh, now that you're on the hard luck tack," quoth Ben, "there was the Junior, of New Bedford. I've heard my uncle tell of her. Out a year and two months and put back to port clean—and the crew plumb disgusted. Could you blame 'em?"

This conversation went on between our watches while the three sperm whales were being butchered. There was a peculiarity about these cachelots that I failed to mention. We butchered them in a different manner than we did the Greenland, or right, whale. The cachelot has no baleen but it furnishes spermaceti. A large, nearly triangular cavity in the right side of the head, called the "case" (sometimes spermaceti is called "case oil") is lined with a beautiful, silver-like membrane, and covered by a thick layer of muscular fibres. This cavity contains a secretion of an oily fluid which, after the death of the animal, congeals into a granulated yellowish-hued substance. Our whale, the first of the school killed by the second mate's boat—had in its case a tun, or ten barrels, of spermaceti!

While the trying-out operations were under way we lost, of course, that school of sperms; but we drifted some miles into the south, and as soon as Captain Rogers could get canvas on her, we made a splendid run for two days west of south and so caught up either with that same school, or with another herd of cachelots.

I had thus far seen some of the sport, a good deal of the hard work, and some of the uncertainties of the whaleman's life; now I came upon a streak of peril the remembrance of which is not likely to be sponged from my mind as long as I possess any memory at all.

It was at daybreak the lookout hailed the deck with "Ah-h blows! And spouts! All about us, sir!"

It was true. We had run into the midst of the school of whales. Captain Rogers being called by Mr. Robbins, took a look around the sea-line, cast a shrewd look at the heavens, went and squinted at the glass, and then ordered the canvas reefed down and all hands to breakfast. The prospect, of both weather and whales, was for a good kill.

The healthy rivalry between the boats was now manifest. Captain Rogers ordered all six out, leaving but two men aboard the bark. They could just manage to steer her under the riding sail. Our boat was off as soon as any and we pulled steadily for the whale we had chosen as our prize. We had brought in the biggest one before and we hoped to do as well on this occasion.

But we couldn't pick the biggest this time, for as we shot through the rippling waves, aiming for a huge bull that rolled on the surface, up popped a young female, with a calf, right in our course.

"Look out for her!" quoth old Tom Anderly. "She'll be ugly, sir—with that kid beside her. Better think twice of it, Mr. Gibson."

"Think we're going to have the other boats give us the yah-yah because we pass up a fifty-foot she whale, eh?" demanded the young second officer. "Just step forward here, old timer, and see if you can stick your fork into her."

After all, the mate's word was law even to the old boat-steerer. They quickly changed places and Tom took up the iron. The calf was playing on the far side of its mother, and so we could easily come up upon the nigh side without being observed.

In a few moments Tom had her pinned. Then there was the Old Harry to pay and no pitch hot, as the sailors say!

The other two whales I had seen killed merely thought of running away from the thing that had hurt them. But the one we now were fast in had her baby to care for. She set off running, but would not swim faster than the calf could travel. We did not put out the full length of one line.

"Haul in! haul in!" cried Ben Gibson, excitedly. "I'll get a lance in her."

"You be careful, sir," whispered old Tom, from the stern again, to which he had gone after throwing the iron. "There ain't nothing wickeder than a she whale with a sucking calf, when she's roused."

We had drawn in rather close and could see that the calf was falling behind. The mother noticed it as well. She feared the thing that had stung her; but, mother-like, she clung to her little one. She swerved around and the line fell slack.

"Look out, now, sir!" cried Tom Anderly again. "She's mad, and she's scared, and she's looking for us. If she once gits her tail under our bottom its good-bye Jo for all hands—and the water's mighty wet today."

Almost as he ceased speaking the wicked eye of the great creature blinked at the boat, and she came rushing down upon it. Tom threw himself upon the great steering oar, while Ben shouted:

"Pull! Pull, you lubbers! Do you want to be swamped by the critter?"

We bent our backs to the struggle and the whaleboat shot ahead; but the maddened cow-whale came on, as big as a brick warehouse, and bent on running us under!



CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH I COME VERY NEAR GOING OUT OF THE STORY

Our boat escaped the collision with the mad whale on her first attack. She rushed by us like a steamer, throwing up a wave from her jaws and just "humping herself." Old Tom swerved us about swiftly in her wake and we came right upon the calf.

"By jinks! I'll soak you one for luck, anyway!" ejaculated the angry second mate, and he up with his lance-gun and put a shot into the little fellow.

"Now, sir, we'll have trouble with her," grunted Tom, grimly.

"She's coming back!" stroke oar shouted.

It seemed as though the whale knew her young had been killed. She whirled in the sea and rushed down upon the drifting calf, the blood from which tinged the sea for yards around its carcass. It was really pitiful to see her stop at it, and seemingly caress it, drawing it toward her with her huge fin that it might suckle. But we were alive to the chance of getting near enough to lance her, and under whispered instructions rowed in.

Mr. Gibson had risen and aimed the gun and was about to fire when the cow-whale seemed to suddenly understand her loss and her own danger. With a mighty flirt of her tail (which same came near to swamping our boat) she "sounded," as it is called.

Her head went down and her great tail flirted in the air. Mr. Gibson went over backward, exploding the gun and sending the bomb-lance into the air. The whale was out of sight in a flash and the line began to run over the bow with a speed that made the woodwork smoke.

I bent on another line and then dipped up some water in the bailer to throw upon the smoking gunwale. It was at this moment that I came as close to death as ever whaleman experienced. A lurch of the boat canted me and I threw out my left hand to prevent myself from diving overboard.

It was a most unfortunate gesture. In some way that uncoiling line, which moved so fast one could scarcely follow it with the eye, wrapped about my arm below the elbow and—like a flash—I was jerked out of the boat and shot beneath the surface of the sea!

I would like to tell of this terrible incident as it seemed to my mates in the whaleboat; I presume they were aghast at my flight over the bow and disappearance. For a man to be carried overboard by the harpoon line, and entangled in that line, is not an unknown incident in the annals of whale-fishing. But only one person ever went through the experience and lived to tell of it before my time—or so I am informed. This was Captain Parker of the American whaler West Wind.

I don't know how the matter seemed to Captain Parker; I can only relate my own sensations. And, believe me, they were queer enough. I shot down after the sounding whale with a rapidity that seemed to deprive me of the ordinary powers of thought or imagination. My only conscious idea was that I was a dead boy if I could not cut that line!

I was rushing down into the depths head-foremost—and with the swiftness, it seemed, of a reversed skyrocket! I thought my arm would be torn from its socket, so great was the resistance of the water. Fortunately I had been clothed in a thick jacket, and that jacket-sleeve saved my arm from being mutilated.

I was traveling so fast behind the sounding whale that I could not move my right arm from my side. It seemed glued there, so closely was it pressed to my body by the force of the water. The pressure on my brain became frightful, too, and thunder roared in my ears—or, so it seemed.

For an instant I opened my eyes. It appeared that a stream of blasting flame passed before them. I was blinded.

But, providentially, I was composed. I knew what I was about—rather, what was happening to me—each moment. I struggled to reach the knife I wore at my belt; but every second I grew weaker. The compression around my chest was like that of a tightening band of iron.

Of course, only seconds elapsed; but it seemed a very, very long time. Would the whale ever reach the bottom? Would the line ever sag? Far gone as I was, my brain remained perfectly clear and I was ready to make use of the least fortunate incident in my favor.

Then it came—the slackening of the line. I drove forward with a mighty kick of my feet—a last gasp of strength. My fingers closed on the handle of the gully, I ripped it out of its sheath, and slashed the keen blade across the line.

I cut my wrist a bit in so doing. Luckily, I cut ahead of the arm entangled in the line; it was more by good luck than good management.

My remembrances after that are confused. I know I shot upward from the dreadful depths, the human body being so much more buoyant than the salt sea. I lost consciousness slowly. All I finally remember was an enlarging spot of light toward which I mounted but which seemed to be miles and miles away!

I was suffocating. A gurgling spasm seized upon me. Light, and sense, and all were quenched suddenly. Life was slipping from my grasp.



CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH WE REALIZE THE "GRIND" OF THE WHALEMAN'S LIFE

According to Ben Gibson, they immediately gave me up for dead. The chance that my arm had not been torn away from the shoulder was small, and once thus crippled they expected the spouting blood to attract the sharks, and then—good night!

But while I remained conscious I had not even thought of those monsters; nor do I believe that a single one of the beasts came near me while I followed the whale toward the bottom of the sea.

The men in my boat were helpless. They might not aid me in the least. Nor did they know when I severed the line and started for the surface again. The weight of the hemp kept it down, although it stopped running out. Fortunately it uncoiled from my arm, or I would have been held down there and drowned.

They stared in horror over the sides of the whaleboat, trying to distinguish any moving object in the depths, and as moment after moment passed they glanced at each other and shook their heads. I was lost. They had no hope of ever even seeing me again.

And then it was that the sharp eyes of the old boat-steerer descried my arm above the surface, not many yards away.

"There! look yon!" he yelled. "Pull, you lubbers!"

They shot the boat ahead and the old man seized me, plunging in his arm to the shoulder as I sank again. Ben had begun to strip off his clothing, bound to dive for me if the old man missed. But there was no need of that, and they hauled me over the side into the boat a deal more dead than alive.

Indeed, I fought when they brought me back to consciousness. It was awful suffering, that recovery—that return to the world which I had every reason to suppose I had said good-bye to. It was a good half hour before I began to realize where I was, and what was happening to me.

We could not go back to the ship, however. Whale fishing is a grim business. A struck whale has completely smashed a boat, leaving its crew struggling in the water, and the other boats have gone on after the monster and left their companions to paddle about on the wreckage as best they can until the leviathan is killed.

The other boats from the Scarboro were all busy and our boat was behind. We had lost our whale and the better part of two lines had gone with the iron. Before I could do more than lie on the bottom of the boat, under the men's feet, and gasp, we were pulling after the wounded female again. She had come up for air and lay sullenly on the surface not half a mile away.

She was a Tartar; but old Tom got another iron in her, and later Ben Gibson killed her with two bomb-pointed lances. When the old bark came down upon us about night she was dead and we hauled her alongside—the first fish to be grappled to. But the other boats brought in three more. We were having great luck and for two more days worked like Trojans.

But the school of cachelots we had followed had disappeared then. The Scarboro sailed many a league farther south—and toward the Horn—before we raised a single whale. We were 40 degrees south then—below the de la Plata. I feared that the old bark would not put in at Buenos Ayres and there would be no chance of my returning home by steamship.

Not that I was yet tired of my work and the life we led. No, indeed. But I was anxious to hear from home, and I believed letters must be waiting me there at Buenos Ayres—and money, too.

No use to think of touching port, however, when the weather was so fine and whales were so infrequently met with. The whole crew had begun to get anxious. Mr. Robbins grumbled that he didn't see the use of roaming about the South Atlantic, anyway. It was the Pacific that whales frequented.

"Why the last time I sailed in a windjammer," declared the mate, "we were four weeks getting around the Horn from Santiago, and there wasn't a day went over our heads that we didn't see plenty of whales. The minute we got onto this side of Fuego we never saw a fin—and we ran to Bahia. Wouldn't have known there ever was a whale in this darned old ocean."

But the beginning of the cruise had been fortunate, and the whales had not entirely forsaken the Atlantic despite the grumbling of the crew. We killed two small humpedbacks within the week and then came upon sperms again. At daybreak the lookout hailed and the sea seemed fairly alive with them.

We tumbled out and, with only a pannikin of coffee in our stomachs, and a cold bite in our fists, made off in the boats for the royal game. Ben Gibson's boat had a good tally so far and we were not going to let the others beat us much. We had our pick of half a dozen sperms and we took after a bull that seemed promising.

We struck on and the wounded whale ran a little way in fright, trying its best to shake out the harpoon. Finding this impossible, despite its porpoise-like gambols, the whale sounded; then occurred one of the strangest happenings that can be imagined. The bull went down, and we paid out a goodly portion of line. Finally the line stopped running, but the whale did not rise.

"What do you know about this, Tom?" demanded the young second mate. "That critter's gone to sleep down there, hasn't it?"

"It'll be drowned!" exclaimed the old harpooner. "That's what'll happen to it."

"Drowned!" cackled one of the crew. "What you givin' us, old hardshell? Drown a whale, eh? That's like the boy that pumped water on the frog to drown him."

"You wait and see," growled old Tom. "If that bull don't come up pretty soon we'll have a circus with it, now I tell ye!"

The whale gave no sign. We tried hauling on the line, and of course it wouldn't budge.

"It's sure got its feet stuck in the mud down there," admitted the second mate, and he stood up and wigwagged frantically for the ship.

There were only four boats out and the captain himself chanced to be aboard. He knew old Tom would not give up anything easy, and so he brought the Scarboro into hailing distance and we told him what had happened. We had caught a Tartar; the whale wouldn't come to the surface and we couldn't let go without losing our line and iron. It was no use jerking on that line. One can't play a whale like a rock bass!

We rowed to the ship and the line was carried aboard and tagged onto a winch. We got at it right then and, before long, up came the dead body of a whale. It was a good sized one—indeed, I thought at the start that it was bigger looking close beside the bark than it had seemed when we struck on.

And pretty soon we found out the reason why it seemed different. We couldn't find the harpoon Tom Anderly had thrown into it! The line was found jammed to the back of the whale's mouth and wound round its body—whales will roll over and over when struck just as an old salmon will when hooked.

That whale was drowned. A whale isn't a fish, anyway, and this one had been under water so long that it was too late, as Ben Gibson said, to bring forward any "first aid to the drowned" business!

What puzzled us all—from Captain Hi down to the cook's cat—was what had become of the iron?

"And, by jingoes!" cried the second mate, "we ain't got all our line back."

This was plainly a fact. When the whale was grappled onto the bark's side and the line unwound, we found that it still hung down into the sea and was quite taut.

"This blamed critter was anchored!" growled Tom Anderly. "And he dragged his anchor at that."

"Get onto the winch, boys," said Captain Rogers. "Let's see what's hung to it now."

We wound in the line and up came the whale that we had actually struck! The harpoon still held in its body. Good reason why I had thought the first whale seemed different from the one we had chased.

Of course, this whale was drowned, too. When it sounded, the other whale must have crossed our line while feeding with open mouth. Feeling the strange sensation of the hemp in the back of its mouth, the creature had instinctively closed its jaws and, in the struggle, wound the line about its body and been drowned.

Of course, this had kept the first whale down until it had drowned and, marvelous to relate, we had got the both of them—and a tidy addition to our cargo they proceeded to make. The luck of the second mate's boat became proverbial after that haul.

But despite our luck, the real grind of the whaleman's life was taking hold of us now. It was work—hard, bone labor—if we "had luck," and it was likewise work if we missed and rowed hour after hour after an elusive sperm or, at the end of the day, had to row empty handed back to the bark.

Ben Gibson loved money; but he admitted to me that a fifteen hundred dollar prize for the voyage would scarcely pay him for the work and grind of our daily life aboard the Scarboro.



CHAPTER XIX

IN WHICH IS REPORTED A SERIES OF MISADVENTURES

It began much as other busy days had begun for us of the Scarboro, since we got upon the whaling grounds; the fires under the trying-out kettles were scarcely quenched when, just at daybreak, came the hail of the man in the crowsnest:

"On deck, sir! Ah-h blows!"

"Where away?" bawled Captain Rogers, who seemed tireless himself and expected every man and boy aboard to catch the inspiration of a sight that had now become terribly commonplace to us—a spouting cachelot.

"Two p'ints on yer weather bow, sir."

The captain started up the rigging and in a moment the lookout repeated:

"Thar she blo-o-ows!"

"I see her!" bawled the captain. Then turning, his roar penetrated to the fo'castle: "All hands on deck! Tumble up here! Lively now! Sperm whale, ain't she, John?"

"Aye, sir, sir!" returned the lookout. "There she breaches!" as one of the creatures up-ended. A dozen had suddenly come into sight—appearing like imps in a pantomime—"from the vasty deep."

As Captain Hi came down Mr. Robbins reached the quarter.

"Seems a powerful sight of whales, Mr. Robbins," the old man said, passing the mate the glasses.

Mr. Robbins went up and took a good squint all around the horizon.

"Three hundred if there's one, Cap'n!" he declared with reverent enthusiasm.

"Does seem so, doesn't it?" admitted the captain.

The crew had tumbled up and were getting the boats ready. Only four were going out, but the skipper stayed us until we had had breakfast.

"We're going into a man's job this morning," he grunted. "We want to be prepared for it."

It might be that some of the boat crews wouldn't be back at the ship for eighteen hours. It often happened, and pulling a heavy ash oar on an empty stomach is not an inspiring job.

Inside of five minutes after the first hail the whales spouting from one end of the skyline to the other. We had run into the biggest herd of sperms that the oldest whaleman on the Scarboro had ever seen. Maybe we didn't feel excited! At such times as this one forgets the "grind." There was both money and excitement ahead of us. We actually sloughed off the weariness we had felt after a steady twenty-four hours' spell at the try-out kettles.

We lowered and spread out, fanwise, from the bark and made for the whales. No need of racing this morning. As Tom said, it looked as though a harpoon thrown into the air in almost any direction would hit a whale when it came down!

I was eager to throw an iron myself. I had the physique for it, being such a stocky fellow. And the hard life I had lived since being swept out to sea in my Wavecrest had agreed with me. My muscles were like wire cables, I was burned as black as a negro, and there was scarcely a man aboard the bark whom I could not have flung in a fair wrestle.

"Give Clint his chance, Tom," said Mr. Gibson, as the boat-steerer came forward. "If he misses, you can throw a second iron."

I was tickled enough at this. Old Tom had given me plenty of advice before about the handling of the harpoon, and I tried to remember all of his teaching as I released my bow oar and took up the first iron.

Perhaps it would be interesting to my readers if I told them something about this weapon of the whaleman. The bomb-lance and gun are all very well; but the harpoon is the real weapon on which the whaleman must depend. This iron must be right and the line attached to it must be right, or the best of harpooners will make a poor tally.

The whale line is a fine manila rope 1-1/2 inches thick. It is stretched and coiled with the greatest care into tubs, some holding two hundred fathoms, some a hundred fathoms. The harpoons are fixed to poles of rough, heavy wood, every care being taken to make them as strong as possible. And their weight necessitates a harpooner being chosen from among the biggest and strongest men in the ship.

The harpoon blade is made like an arrow, but with only one barb, which turns on a steel pivot. The point of the harpoon blade is ground as sharp as a razor on one side and blunt on the other. The shaft is about thirty inches long and made of the best soft iron so that it is practically impossible to break it. Three irons were always placed in our boat, fitted one above the other in the starboard bow. If the harpooner missed with one iron, or if there was time to fling a second, he could reach and get it handily.

In the old days the lances were slung in the port bow. It was with the lance the whale was actually killed. The harpoon only serves to make the boat fast to its prize. The lances were slender spears about four feet long with broad points. The old-time whalemen were rowed right up to the side of the ironed monster, after it had tired itself out fighting, and the officer in the bow had to churn the lance up and down in the great beast until the point reached a vital spot.

For this reason there were many more serious accidents in the old times than now. In each boat belonging to the Scarboro there was stowed a lance-gun in place of the lances. The bomb-lance is surer than the old-time lance, and keeps the boat and crew farther from the seat of peril.

I rose up as soon as we drove in near the big bull that we had been approaching. And it was a big fellow! I think it was as large a sperm as we had seen. Its upper jaw and head was covered with lumps and scars of old wounds. Along the flank was a half-healed, jagged gash, too.

"That old boy's collided with something," grumbled Tom Anderly in my ear. "I believe he's a rogue."

I had heard of ancient, isolated he-elephants being called "rogue;" but I did not know before that whalemen believe that certain old bull whales are just as savage and revengeful as tigers. Indeed, among all wild creatures—either on land or in the sea—there seem to be ancient bulls that go off from their kind and sulk. They easily "run amuck"—perhaps are really insane. To attack them is far more perilous than to attack a herd of their normal fellows.

This old bull whale, however, had not deserted the society of his fellows; but he proved to be as ugly a customer as we could have found in all that school of three hundred or more sperms!

"He looks bad to me," whispered Tom Anderly. "He's a fighter. He's probably smashed more boats in his time than the old hooker carries when she's nested up full. Gosh! look at the warts on him."

"And that gash in his side," said Ben. "How do you suppose that happened?"

"Looks just like he'd rubbed against a copper keel," declared the old man.

I thought they were trying to scare me. But I learned later that it was not an uncommon thing for an old whale to use a ship's keel to rub himself against—it scrapes off the barnacles!

I just gave old Tom a grim look, however, and seized the harpoon. We were creeping up on the bull and I intended to make a good cast. The creature was weaving slowly along and not paying any attention to our boat at all. My! he did look enormous. The nearer we came to him the more threatening was his appearance. He was more than a hundred feet long, I was sure. He would have weighed as much as twenty-five of the biggest elephants that ever showed in a menagerie.