第71章 ON THE "LINE" GROUNDS(3)

After a few moments of this tremendous exertion, our victim settled down, leaving the water deeply stained with his gushing blood.With him disappeared his constant companion, the faithful cow, who had never left his side a minute since we first got fast.Down, down they went, until my line began to look very low, and I was compelled to make signals to the ship for more.We had hardly elevated the oars, when down dropped the last boat with four men in her, arriving by my side in a few minutes with two fresh tubs of tow-line.We took them on board, and the boat returned again.By the time the slack came we had about four hundred and fifty fathoms out--a goodly heap to pile up loose in our stern-sheets.I felt sure, however, that we should have but little more trouble with our fish; in fact, I was half afraid that he would die before getting to the surface, in which case he might sink and be lost.We hauled steadily away, the line not coming in very easily, until I judged there was only about another hundred fathoms out.Our amazement may be imagined, when suddenly we were compelled to sleek away again, the sudden weight on the line suggesting that the fish was again sounding.If ever a young hand was perplexed, it was I.Never before had I heard of such unseemly behaviour, nor was my anxiety lessened when Isaw, a short distance away, the huge body of my prize at the surface spouting blood.At the same time, I was paying out line at a good rate, as if I had a fast fish on which was sounding briskly.

The skipper had been watching me very closely from his seat on the taffrail, and had kept the ship within easy distance.Now, suspecting something out of the common, he sent the boat again to my assistance, in charge of the cooper.When that worthy arrived, he said, "Th' ol' man reckens yew've got snarled erp'ith thet ar' loose keow, 'n y'r irons hev draw'd from th' other.I'm gwine ter wait on him,'n get him 'longside 'soon's he's out'er his flurry.Ole man sez yew'd best wait on what's fast t' yer an' nev' mine th' other." Away he went, reaching my prize just as the last feeble spout exhaled, leaving the dregs of that great flood of life trickling lazily down from the widely expanded spiracle.To drive a harpoon into the carcass, and run the line on board, was the simplest of jobs, for, as the captain had foreseen, my irons were drawn clean.I had no leisure to take any notice of them now, though, for whatever was on my line was coming up hand-over-fist.

With a bound it reached the surface--the identical cow so long attendant upon the dead whale.Having been so long below for such a small whale, she was quite exhausted, and before she had recovered we had got alongside of her and lanced her, so thoroughly that she died without a struggle.The ship was so close that we had her alongside in a wonderfully short time, and with scarcely any trouble.

When I reached the deck, the skipper called me, and said several things that made me feel about six inches taller.He was, as may be thought, exceedingly pleased, saying that only once in his long career had he seen a similar case; for I forgot to mention that the line was entangled around the cow's down-hanging jaw, as if she had actually tried to bite in two the rope that held her consort, and only succeeded in sharing his fate.I would not like to say that whales do not try to thus sever a line, but, their teeth being several inches apart, conical, and fitting into sockets in the upper jaw instead of meeting the opposed surfaces of other teeth, the accomplishment of such a feat must, I think, be impossible.

The ship being now as good as anchored by the vast mass of flesh hanging to her, there was a tremendous task awaiting us to get the other fish alongside.Of course they were all to windward;they nearly always are, unless the ship is persistently "turned to windward" while the fishing is going on.Whalers believe that they always work up into the wind while fast, and, when dead, it is certain that they drift at a pretty good rate right in the "wind's eye." This is accounted for by the play of the body, which naturally lies head to wind; and the wash of the flukes, which, acting somewhat like the "sculling" of an oar at the stern of a boat, propel the carcass in the direction it is pointing, Consequently we had a cruel amount of towing to do before we got the three cows alongside.Many a time we blessed ourselves that they were no bigger, for of all the clumsy things to tow with boats, a sperm whale is about the worst.Offing to the great square mass of the heed, they can hardly be towed head-on at all, the practice being to cut off the tips of the flukes, and tow them tail first.But even then it is slavery.To dip your oar about three times in the same hole from whence you withdrew it, to tug at it with all your might, apparently making as much progress as though you were fast to a dock-wall, and to continue this fun for four or five hours at a stretch, is to wonder indeed whether you have not mistaken your vocation.

However, "it's dogged as does it," so by dint of sheer sticking to the oar, we eventually succeeded in getting all our prizes alongside before eight bells that evening, securing them around us by hawsers to the cows, but giving the big bull the post of honour alongside on the best fluke-chain.

We were a busy company for a fortnight thence, until the last of the oil was run below--two hundred and fifty barrels, or twenty-five tuns, of the valuable fluid having rewarded our exertions.

During these operations we had drifted night and day, apparently without anybody taking the slightest account of the direction we were taking; when, therefore, on the day after clearing up the last traces of our fishing, the cry of "Land ho!" came ringing down from the crow's-nest, no one was surprised, although the part of the Pacific in which we were cruising has but few patches of TERRA FIRMA scattered about over its immense area when compared with the crowded archipelagoes lying farther south and east.

We could not see the reported land from the deck for two hours after it was first seen from aloft, although the odd spectacle of a scattered group of cocoa-nut trees apparently growing out of the sea was for some time presented to us before the island itself came into view.It was Christmas Island, where the indefatigable Captain Cook landed on December 24, 1777, for the purpose of making accurate observations of an eclipse of the sun.

He it was who gave to this lonely atoll the name it has ever since borne, with characteristic modesty giving his own great name to a tiny patch of coral which almost blocks the entrance to the central lagoon.Here we lay "off and on" for a couple of days, while foraging parties went ashore, returning at intervals with abundance of turtle and sea-fowls' eggs.But any detailed account of their proceedings must be ruthlessly curtailed, owing to the scanty limits of space remaining.