We instantly pulled to the rescue, and were thankful to find that not a man was killed, though some of them were a little hurt, and all had received a terrible fright. We next set to work to right the upset boat, an operation which was not accomplished without much labour and difficulty.
Now, while we were thus employed, our third boat, which was in charge of the second mate, had gone after the whale that had caused us so much trouble, and when we had got the boat righted and began to look about us, we found that she was fast to the fish about a mile to leeward.
“Hurrah, lads!” cried the captain, “luck has not left us yet. Give way, my hearties, pull like Britons! we’ll get that fish yet.”
We were all dreadfully done up by this time, but the sight of a boat fast to a whale restored us at once, and we pulled away as stoutly as if we had only begun the day’s work. The whale was heading in the direction of the ship, and when we came up to the scene of action the second mate had just “touched the life”; in other words, he had driven the lance deep down into the whale’s vitals. This was quickly known by jets of blood being spouted up through the blow-holes. Soon after, our victim went into its dying agonies, or, as whalemen say, “his flurry.”
This did not last long. In a short time he rolled over dead. We fastened a line to his tail, the three boats took the carcass in tow, and, singing a lively song, we rowed away to the ship.
Thus ended our first battle with the whales.
CHAPTER FOUR.
“Cutting-in the Blubber” and “Trying out the Oil.”
The scene that took place on board ship after we caught our first fish was most wonderful.
We commenced the operation of what is called “cutting-in,” that is, cutting up the whale, and getting the fat or blubber hoisted in. The next thing we did was to “try out” the oil, or melt down the fat in large iron pots brought with us for this purpose; and the change that took place in the appearance of the ship and the men when this began was very remarkable.
When we left port our decks were clean, our sails white, our masts well scraped; the brass-work about the quarter-deck was well polished, and the men looked tidy and clean. A few hours after our first whale had been secured alongside all this was changed. The cutting up of the huge carcass covered the decks with oil and blood, making them so slippery that they had to be covered with sand to enable the men to walk about. Then the smoke of the great fires under the melting-pots begrimed the masts, sails, and cordage with soot. The faces and hands of the men got so covered with oil and soot that it would have puzzled any one to say whether they were white or black. Their clothes, too, became so dirty that it was impossible to clean them. But, indeed, whalemen do not much mind this. In fact, they take a pleasure in all the dirt that surrounds them, because it is a sign of success in the main object of their voyage. The men in a clean whale-ship are never happy. When everything is filthy, and dirty, and greasy, and smoky, and black—decks, rigging, clothes, and person—it is then that the hearty laugh and jest and song are heard as the crew work busily, night and day, at their rough but profitable labour.
The operations of “cutting-in” and “trying out” were matters of great interest to me the first time I saw them.
After having towed our whale to the ship, cutting-in was immediately begun. First, the carcass was secured near the head and tail with chains, and made fast to the ship; then the great blocks and ropes fastened to the main and foremast for hoisting in the blubber were brought into play. When all was ready, the captain and the two mates with Tom Lokins got upon the whale’s body, with long-handled sharp spades or digging-knives. With these they fell to work cutting off the blubber.
I was stationed at one of the hoisting ropes, and while we were waiting for the signal to “hoist away,” I peeped over the side, and for the first time had a good look at the great fish. When we killed it, so much of its body was down in the water that I could not see it very clearly, but now that it was lashed at full length alongside the ship, and I could look right down upon it, I began to understand more clearly what a large creature it was. One thing surprised me much; the top of its head, which was rough and knotty like the bark of an old tree, was swarming with little crabs and barnacles, and other small creatures. The whale’s head seemed to be their regular home! This fish was by no means one of the largest kind, but being the first I had seen, I fancied it must be the largest fish in the sea.
Its body was forty feet long, and twenty feet round at the thickest part. Its head, which seemed to me a great, blunt, shapeless thing, like a clumsy old boat, was eight feet long from the tip to the blow-holes or nostrils; and these holes were situated on the back of the head, which at that part was nearly four feet broad. The entire head measured about twenty-one feet round. Its ears were two small holes, so small that it was difficult to discover them, and the eyes were also very small for so large a body, being about the same size as those of an ox. The mouth was very large, and the under jaw had great ugly lips.
When it was dying, I saw these lips close in once or twice on its fat cheeks, which it bulged out like the leather sides of a pair of gigantic bellows. It had two fins, one on each side, just behind the head. With these, and with its tail, the whale swims and fights. Its tail is its most deadly weapon. The flukes of this one measured thirteen feet across, and with one stroke of this it could have smashed our largest boat in pieces. Many a boat has been sent to the bottom in this way.
I remember hearing our first mate tell of a wonderful escape a comrade of his had in the Greenland Sea fishery. A whale had been struck, and, after its first run, they hauled up to it again, and rowed so hard that they ran the boat right against it. The harpooner was standing on the bow all ready, and sent his iron cleverly into the blubber. In its agony the whale reared its tail high out of the water, and the flukes whirled for a moment like a great fan just above the harpooner’s head. One glance up was enough to show him that certain death was descending. In an instant he dived over the side and disappeared. Next moment the flukes came down on the part of the boat he had just left, and cut it clean off; the other part was driven into the waves, and the men were left swimming in the water. They were all picked up, however, by another boat that was in company, and the harpooner was recovered with the rest. His quick dive had been the saving of his life.
I had not much time given me to study the appearance of this whale before the order was given to “hoist away!” so we went to work with a will. The first part that came up was the huge lip, fastened to a large iron hook, called the blubber hook. It was lowered into the blubber-room between decks, where a couple of men were stationed to stow the blubber away. Then came the fins, and after them the upper-jaw, with the whalebone attached to it. The “right” whale has no teeth like the sperm whale. In place of teeth it has the well-known substance called whalebone, which grows from the roof of its mouth in a number of broad thin plates, extending from the back of the head to the snout. The lower edges of these plates of whalebone are split into thousands of hairs like bristles, so that the inside roof of a whale’s mouth resembles an enormous blacking brush! The object of this curious arrangement is to enable the whale to catch the little shrimps and small sea-blubbers, called “medusae,” on which it feeds. I have spoken before of these last as being the little creatures that gave out such a beautiful pale-blue light at night. The whale feeds on them. When he desires a meal he opens his great mouth and rushes into the midst of a shoal of medusae; the little things get entangled in thousands among the hairy ends of the whalebone, and when the monster has got a large enough mouthful, he shuts his lower-jaw and swallows what his net has caught.
The wisdom as well as the necessity of this arrangement is very plain. Of course, while dashing through the sea in this fashion, with his mouth agape, the whale must keep his throat closed, else the water would rush down it and choke him. Shutting