第52章 OFF TO THE JAPAN GROUNDS(3)

Here, at any rate, there was quiet and decorum, while all that could be done for the poor sufferer (not much, from ignorance of how he was injured) was done.He was released from his pain in the afternoon of the second day after the accident, the end coming suddenly and peacefully.The same evening, at sunset, the body, neatly sewn up in canvas, with a big lump of sandstone secured to the feet, was brought on deck, laid on a hatch at the gangway, and covered with the blue, star-spangled American Jack.

Then all hands were mustered in the waist, the ship's bell was tolled, and the ensign run up halfway.

The captain was still too ill to be moved, so the mate stepped forward with a rusty old Common Prayer-book in his hands, whereon my vagrant fancy immediately fastened in frantic endeavour to imagine how it came to be there.The silence of death was over all.True, the man was but a unit of no special note among us, but death had conferred upon him a brevet rank, in virtue of which be dominated every thought.It seemed strange to me that we who faced death so often and variously, until natural fear had become deadened by custom, should, now that one of our number lay a rapidly-corrupting husk before us, be so tremendously impressed by the simple, inevitable fact.I suppose it was because none of us were able to realize the immanence of Death until we saw his handiwork.Mr.Count opened the book, fumbling nervously among the unfamiliar leaves.Then he suddenly looked up, his weather-scarred face glowing a dull brick-red, and said, in a low voice, "This thing's too many fer me; kin any of ye do it? Ef not, Iguess we'll hev ter take it as read." There was no response for a moment; then I stepped forward, reaching out my hand for the book.Its contents were familiar enough to me, for in happy pre-arab days I had been a chorister in the old Lock Chapel, Harrow Road, and had borne my part in the service so often that I think even now I could repeat the greater part of it MEMORITER.Mr.

Count gave it me without a word, and, trembling like a leaf, Iturned to the "Burial Service," and began the majestic sentences, "I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord." I did not know my own voice as the wonderful words sounded clearly in the still air; but if ever a small body of soul-hardened men FELT the power of God, it was then.At the words, "We therefore commit his body to the deep," I paused, and, the mate making a sign, two of the harpooners tilted the hatch, from which the remains slid off into the unknown depths with a dull splash.Several of the dead man's compatriots covered their faces, and murmured prayers for the repose of his soul, while the tears trickled through their horny fingers.But matters soon resumed their normal course; the tension over, back came the strings of life into position again, to play the same old tunes and discords once more.

The captured whale made an addition to our cargo of one hundred and ten barrels--a very fair haul indeed.The harpooners were disposed to regard this capture as auspicious upon opening the North Pacific, where, in spite of the time we had spent, and the fair luck we had experienced in the Indian Ocean, we expected to make the chief portion of our cargo.

Our next cruising-ground is known to whalemen as the "Coast of Japan" ground, and has certainly proved in the past the most prolific fishery of sperm whales in the whole world.I am inclined now to believe that there are more and larger cachalots to be found in the Southern Hemisphere, between the parallels of 33deg.and 50deg.South; but there the drawback of heavy weather and mountainous seas severely handicaps the fishermen.

It is somewhat of a misnomer to call the Coast of Japan ground by that name, since to be successful you should not sight Japan at all, but keep out of range of the cold current that sweeps right across the Pacific, skirting the Philippines, along the coasts of the Japanese islands as far as the Kuriles, and then returns to the eastward again to the southward of the Aleutian Archipelago.

The greatest number of whales are always found in the vicinity of the Bonin and Volcano groups of islands, which lie in the eddy formed by the northward bend of the mighty current before mentioned.This wonderful ground was first cruised by a London whale-ship, the SYREN, in 1819, when the English branch of the sperm whale-fishery was in its prime, and London skippers were proud of the fact that one of their number, in the EMILIA, had thirty-one years before first ventured around Cape Horn in pursuit of the cachalot.