Old Jack Part 27

"I say, mate," said he, in a sort of put-on manner, "I see that you've just landed one of your people. Does your captain, think you, want another man in his stead?"

"I suppose so," I answered, looking at him hard, to make out what he was, though I didn't succeed. "But the mate will be down presently-- you'd better ask him. He may meantime have s.h.i.+pped another hand."

"I'll run the chance," he replied. "I'll go up and fetch my chest from my lodging. Just tell him, if he comes down in the meantime, that a man has volunteered to join. You can judge whether I'm likely to be fit for work." He spoke in an off-hand, easy way, and without waiting for my reply, he walked rapidly up from the quay.

The mate, directly after, came down without having found a man to his taste. I told him that one had offered--a strongly-built, active-looking, intelligent man, just cut out for a sailor, though, as I said, I did not think he was one. Mr Marsh, the mate, listened to my account, and as he stepped into the boat, seemed to be looking for the stranger. After waiting a few minutes, as the man did not appear, he gave the order to shove off.

"There he comes, sir," said I, seeing him walking rapidly along the quay with a seaman's bag over his shoulder, while a porter accompanied him carrying a moderate-sized chest.

"If you want another hand, I'm ready to s.h.i.+p for the voyage," said he, coming down the slip, and abruptly addressing the mate.

"Seaman or not, he'll do," said Mr Marsh to himself. "Well, put your traps into the boat, and come aboard, and we'll see what the captain has to say to the matter," he answered, aloud.

The young man dropped a s.h.i.+lling into the hand of the porter, who looked at the coin and then at his countenance, and touched his hat. The stranger sat down on his chest in the bow of the boat, and we were soon on board. The captain then sent for him aft, and held him in conversation for half an hour or more. What was said I do not know; but the result was, that the young man came forward and told me that he had been entered as one of the crew, requesting me to show him where he was to stow his chest and bag. "In the forepeak," said I; but he evidently did not know where that was, so without saying a word I helped him down with it.

The first night we were at sea I had the middle watch, and scarcely had I made a dozen turns on deck, when he joined me. "What is your name?"

said he; "I did not catch it." I told him.

"Well," he continued, "there is no use denying it--I am not a sailor.

The captain knows this; but I have promised soon to become one, and I want to keep my promise. Will you help me to do so, by teaching me all I want to know?"

I told him I would do all I could for him, but that, as this was my first voyage in a whaler, I could not help him much about whaling matters.

"Oh, that will soon come," he answered. "I seldom see a thing done once that I cannot do afterwards; but I want you to help me in seamans.h.i.+p. I have been constantly on the water, and know how to handle a boat, but never before made a voyage."

I was so pleased with the frank way in which he acknowledged his ignorance, and the hearty desire he showed to learn, that I resolved to instruct him in everything I knew.

I never found anybody pick up information so rapidly as he did. It was only necessary to show him once how to do a thing, while he kept his sharp eye fixed on the work, and ever after he did it almost if not quite as well. He very soon dropped the nautical phraseology he had a.s.sumed when he came on board, and which was clearly not habitual to him; and though he picked up all our phrases, he made use of them more in a joking way than as if he spoke them without thought, as we did.

From the way he spoke, or from his manner when he addressed any of his messmates or the officers, or from the way he walked the deck, it was difficult to suppose him anything else than a gentleman-born, or a gentleman by education, whatever he had now become, and he at once got the name forward of "Gentleman Ned." I asked him his name the day after he came on board.

"Oh, ay. I forgot that," he answered, quickly. "Call me Newman--Ned Newman. It's not a bad name, is it?" So Ned Newman he was called; but I felt pretty certain from the first that it was not his real name.

He was good-looking, with fair hair and complexion, and a determined, firm expression about the mouth. He seemed to put perfect confidence in me, and we at once became great friends--not that we had at first many ideas in common, for I was very ignorant, and he knew more than I supposed it possible for any man to know. He showed me his chest, which surprised me not a little. Most of his clothes were contained in his bag. He had not a large kit, but everything was new and of the best materials, calculated to outlast three times the quant.i.ty of sailors'

common slops. Instead of clothes, his chest contained a spy-gla.s.s, a quadrant, just like those of the officers, and a good stock of books, which I found were in a variety of languages, and some even, I afterwards learned, were in Greek. Then he had all sorts of drawing-materials--papers, and pencils, and sketch-books, and a colour-box, and mathematical instruments, and even a chronometer. He had a writing-case, and a tool-box, and a flute and violin, and some music-books. I asked him if he could use the quadrant.

"I never took an observation in my life; but I can work a day's work as well as a lunar, so I think that I may soon learn the practical part of the business," he answered.

I pointed to his musical instruments. "Yes; I play occasionally, when I wish to dispel an evil spirit; but books are my great resource. Jack, you lose much pleasure from your ignorance of the rudiments of learning.

Take my advice and study. It's not too late to begin. Nonsense!

difficult! everything worth doing is difficult! There's pleasure in overcoming difficulties. Come, you have begun to teach me seamans.h.i.+p-- to knot and splice--to reef and steer. I'll teach you to read, and then the way is open to you to teach yourself whatever you like. Navigation!

certainly. Why, you would have been master of a vessel by this time if you had known that." In the interval of Newman's remarks I was making excuses for my ignorance; but he would listen to none of them, and I promised, old as I was, to put myself under his instruction, and to endeavour to be as apt a pupil to him as he was to me.

As I have said, I never saw anyone learn so rapidly as he did everything which came in his way. Before six weeks had pa.s.sed, there was very little remaining for me to teach him. Every knot and splice he mastered in a week or so, and could make them as neatly as I did. I don't think he had ever before been up a s.h.i.+p's mast; but from the first day he was constantly aloft, examining the rigging, and seeing where all the ropes led to. I had shown him how to reef and furl sails, and the very first squall we had, he was among the foremost aloft to lay-out on the yard.

His hands went as readily as those of the oldest seaman into the tar-bucket; and so, though when he came aboard they were fair and soft, they soon became as brown and hard as any of ours. With the theory of seamans.h.i.+p he was already well acquainted--such as the way by which the wind acts on the sails, the resistance offered by the water on the hull, and so on; so that, when any manoeuvre was performed, he at once knew the reason of it. It is not too much to say that before we crossed the line he was as good a seaman, in many respects, as most of the hands on board; and certainly he would have made a better officer than any of us forward.

We were bound round Cape Horn, and Captain Carr intended to try his fortune on the borders of the Antarctic ice-fields, in the neighbourhood of New Zealand and the coast of j.a.pan, among the East India Islands; and those wide-spreading groups, among which are found the Friendly Islands, the Navigators, the Feejees, the New Hebrides, the Loyalty Islands, and New Caledonia, and known under the general name of Polynesia. Perhaps other places might be visited, so that we had a pretty wide range over which our voyage was likely to extend. People at home are little aware, in general, of the great number of places a South-Seaman visits in the course of a three or four years' whaling-voyage; and certainly in no other trade is a lad of a roving disposition so likely to be able to gratify his tastes.

The first place we touched at was Porto Praya, in the island of Saint Jago, one of the Cape de Verds, our captain being anxious to fill up with water, and to get for the crew a supply of fruit and vegetables and poultry, which are here to be procured in abundance. Sailors, however, are apt to forget that fruit, at all events, is not to be found all the year round; and I have seen people very indignant because the fruit-trees were not bearing their ripe produce at the very moment they were honouring the place by their presence, and heartily abuse previous visitors for having deceived them.

I was one of the boat's crew which went on sh.o.r.e to get provisions, and we were half pulled to pieces, as we entered the town, by men, women, and boys--brown, yellow, and black--chattering away in a jargon of half-African half-Portuguese, as they thrust before our eyes a dozen chickens a few weeks old, all strung together; baskets of eggs, or tamarinds, or dates, or bananas, and bunches of luscious grapes, and pointed to piles of cocoa-nuts, oranges, or limes, heaped up on cocoa-nut leaves close at hand. The place seemed filled with beggars, pigs, monkeys, slatternly females, small donkeys, and big oxen; dirty soldiers and idle sailors of all the shades and colours which distinguish the human race, dressed in handkerchiefs, and s.h.i.+rts, and jackets, and petticoats of every hue of the rainbow--the only thing they had in common being their dirt. Indeed, dirt predominates throughout the streets and dwellings, and in every direction. The houses, though mean, from being white-washed deceive a stranger at a little distance as to the cleanliness of the place. From a spirited sketch Newman made of the scene I have described, I here discovered his talent for drawing.

We next touched at the Falkland Islands, then uninhabited, except by a few Gauchos, who had crossed from South America with a herd of cattle, which have since increased to a prodigious number, as they thrive well on the tussac gra.s.s, the chief natural production of the country. The fresh beef afforded by a couple of oxen was very acceptable, and contributed to keep us in health.

Even before crossing the line, we had been on the look-out for whales, and all the boats and gear were in readiness to be lowered, and to go in chase at a moment's notice. Everybody on board a whaler must be wide-awake, and prepared for all emergencies, or the s.h.i.+p may chance to return home with an empty hold. In no position in which a seaman can be placed is it so necessary to belong to the _try_ fraternity. If whales are not to be found on one fis.h.i.+ng-ground, the s.h.i.+p must move to another; and if not seen there, she must sail on till she chases them round the globe. So if, when a whale is seen, the harpooner misses his aim, and the fish dives and swims a mile or more off, he must watch and watch till she rises, and _try_ again. This try principle should be followed in all the concerns of life. Whatever ought to be done, _try_ and do it; never suppose a work cannot be done till it has been tried-- perseverance in duty is absolutely necessary. Its neglect must bring ruin.

We had a look-out at each mast-head, and one of the mates, or the boatswain, and sometimes the captain, was stationed at the fore-topgallant yard-arm. Sharp eyes were, therefore, constantly watching every part of the ocean, as our s.h.i.+p floated over it to the very verge of the horizon in search of the well-known spout of the whales. Great improvements have taken place since the time I speak of in the apparatus employed in the whale-fishery. I am told that guns are now used with which to send the harpoon into the whale's body, while in my time it was driven by sheer strength and dexterity of arm, as the harpooner stood up at his full height in the bow of the tossing whale-boat, close to the huge monster, one blow of whose tail is sufficient to dash her into atoms.

We were, it must be understood, in search of the sperm whale, which is a very different animal from what is called the black or Greenland whale, whose chief habitation is towards the North Polar regions, though found in other parts of the ocean. There are several sorts of whales, but I will not attempt to give a learned dissertation on them. I should not, indeed, have thought much about the matter, had not Newman called my attention to it. I should have hunted them, and killed them, and boiled down their blubber, with the notion that we had the produce of so many _fish_ on board. Now naturalists, as he told me, a.s.sert that whales should not be called _fish_. They swim and live in the water, and so do fish; they have no legs, nor have fish; but their implements of locomotion are more like arms than fins. But whales do what no fish do: they bring forth their young alive--they suckle them, and tend them with the fondest affection in their youth. They have warm blood, and a double circulation; and they breathe the atmospheric air by true lungs.

The tail of a fish is placed vertically, or up and down; that of a whale, horizontally--that is to say, its broadest part is parallel with the surface of the water. The tail of a large whale is upwards of 20 feet wide, and with a superficies of 100 square feet, and it is moved by muscles of immense strength. This will give some idea of the terrific force with which it can strike a boat. I have, indeed, heard of instances where a whale has stove in a s.h.i.+p's bottom, and caused her to founder, with little time for the crew to escape. Their progressive movement is effected entirely by the tail; sometimes, when wis.h.i.+ng to advance leisurely, by an oblique lateral and downward impulse, first on one side and then on the other, just as a boat is sent through the water when sculled with an oar; but when rus.h.i.+ng through the deep at their greatest speed, they strike the water, now upwards and now downwards, with a rapid motion and vast force. As whales breathe the atmospheric air, they must come to the surface frequently for a fresh supply. They have then to throw out the water which has got into their mouths when feeding. This they do by closing a valve leading to the nasal pa.s.sages, and forcing it by means of air through the blow-hole placed in the upper part of the head. It is this necessity of whales for breathing at the surface which enables man to make them his prey, in spite of their immense strength, while their spouts point out to him the place where they are to be found.

The remarks I have made apply in common to the two chief sorts of whales, but the Greenland whale is a very different animal from the sperm whale, of which we were in search. The Greenland whale, (_Balaena mysticetus_), is also called the common, true, or whale-bone whale. I remember once, in a man-of-war, falling in with a dead whale in a perfect calm. We towed it alongside, but so ignorant was everybody on board of natural history, that no one knew where the whale-bone was to be found. At the cost of great trouble, with a horrible odour to our noses, we cut out a jaw-bone; which was perfectly valueless, except to make the front of a summer-house for our commander; and we then let our prize go with its rich contents, and glad enough we were to get rid of it.

The Greenland whale is less in size than the sperm--its length being about 60 feet. The head occupies about a third of the entire length.

It is narrow above, and broad, flat, and rounded beneath, so as to allow it to move rapidly under the water. The body is largest about the middle, and tapers suddenly towards the tail. The general colour is a blackish-grey, with part of the lower jaw, and throat, and belly white.

The lips are five or six feet high, the eyes very small, and the external opening of the ears scarcely perceptible. The pectoral fins or arms are not long, and are placed about two feet behind the angle of the lips. The black whale has no teeth; but from the upper palate and jaw there hang down perpendicularly numerous parallel laminae--the baleen, or whale-bone, as it is called. [Footnote: The baleen or whale-bone I have described forms a most valuable portion of the produce afforded by the black whale, although not so valuable as the oil extracted from the same animal.] These filaments fill up the whole of the cavity of the mouth, and form a most complete strainer, so that only the most minute animals can enter. This is necessary, as the swallow is too small to admit even the smallest fish. When a black whale feeds, it throws up millions of small animals at a time with its thick lower lip, into the straining apparatus I have described; and as they are scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, when its vast size is considered some slight notion may be formed of the prodigious number it must consume at meal.

There is another whale, found in the northern regions, called the razor-backed whale, from a prominent ridge on its back. It is found 100 feet long. As it is constantly moving along at the rate of five miles an hour, and is very powerful and active, frequently breaking away and carrying lines and gear with it, only the most daring whalers, in default of other prey, venture to attack it. There is a third sort of whale, called the broad-nosed whale, which is in many respects like a razor-back, but smaller--its length being from 50 to 80 feet.

The smallest sort is the beaked whale, which is about 25 feet long.

Great numbers of this whale are often caught in the deep bays and firths of Shetland and Orkney.

I must now give an account of the spermaceti whale, (the _Physeter macrocephalus_), to capture which was the object of our voyage. It is found through every part of the South Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and frequently makes its way to far northern lat.i.tudes. Still the southern seas must be considered its chief abode. In appearance and habits it is very different from the black whale. It is nearly as long as the razor-back, and exceeds it in bulk. In length it may be said to be from 80 to 85 feet, and from 30 to 35 in circ.u.mference. Looking at a sperm whale, the stem on its nose or snout appears very thick, and perfectly blunt, like a huge mallet about to strike. The head is a third part of the length of the body. At its junction with the body a hump rises, which we whalers call the _bunch of the neck_. Behind this is the thickest part of the body, which tapers off till there is another rise which we call the hump, in the shape of a pyramid--then commences the _small_, as we call it, or tail, with a ridge partly down it. The "small" gradually tapers till it contracts very much; and at the end the flukes, or what landsmen would call the tail, is joined on. In the immense head is contained the case, which is a cavity of almost triangular shape, and of great size, containing, when the whale is alive, that oily substance or fluid called spermaceti. I have frequently seen a ton taken from the case of one whale, which is fully ten large barrels. The use to the whale of the spermaceti in its head is, that, being much lighter than water, it can rise with great facility to the surface, and elevate its blow-hole above it. Its mouth is of great size, extending all the length of its head, or, as I have said, a third of its whole length. Its jaws narrow forward to almost a point-- indeed, the lower one does so; and thus, as it swims along, like the stem of a s.h.i.+p, it serves to divide the water wedge, parting to make way for its huge body--the blunt snout being all the time like the lofty forecastle of an old-fas.h.i.+oned s.h.i.+p, clear of the waves high up above it. The inside of the monstrous cavity, the mouth, has nothing like the baleen or whale-bone, such as is found in the Greenland whale; but in the lower jaw it has a formidable row of large teeth of conical shape, forty-two in number. It has, however, none in the upper jaw; but instead, there are holes into which fit the points of those in the lower. These teeth are blunt, and are not used for biting or mastication, but merely to keep in the food which has entered its mouth.

This food is chiefly the _Squid_ or _Sepia octopus_, known also by the name of the cuttle-fish. In the South-Seas they are of enormous size, and, with their long feelers or arms growing out of their heads, are sufficiently strong to hold a man under the water and to kill him.

The sperm whale, however, swallows a variety of other fish. It catches them, not by swimming after them, but by opening wide its mouth and letting its prey swim into it! We will suppose ourselves looking down that vast mouth, as the lower jaw hangs perpendicularly to the belly; incapable it seems of moving. The interior of the throat is very large--capable of swallowing a man; the tongue is very small and delicate, and of a pure white colour; so are the teeth, which glisten brilliantly; and so is the whole interior. Fish are particularly attracted by their white appearance. They take it, perhaps, to be some marble hall erected for their accommodation; so in they swim, big and little squid equally beguiled! How the whale's mouth must water when he feels a fine huge juicy octopus playing about his tongue! Up goes the lower jaw like a trap-door, and cephalapods, small and large, find their bright marble palace turned into a dark, black prison, from which there is no return; for, giving a turn with his tongue, he gulps them all down with a smack which must make old Ocean resound!

In another respect, the sperm is very different from the Greenland whale. It seems to know the power of its jaws, and will sometimes turn on its pursuers and attack them, though generally a timid animal, and disposed to seek safety by flight. The general opinion is, that sperm whales often fight with each other, as we have caught them with their lower jaws twisted in a variety of directions, and otherwise injured.

The sperm whale's eyes are very small, with movable eyelids, and are placed directly above the angle of the mouth, or a third part of its whole length distant from the snout. It is very quick-sighted, as it is also quick of hearing. Its ears--small round holes, which will not admit a little finger--are placed directly behind the eyes. The fins, which, as I have said, might be called paws, are close to the angle of the mouth. I have known a female whale support her young on them; and they are used to balance the body, to steer by, and, when hard pressed, to sink with greater rapidity below the surface. The skin of the whale is perfectly smooth, though old bulls get rough marks about them. As a rule, though black above and white below, as they advance in years, like human beings, they get grey on the head. Oftentimes an old grey-headed bull proves a dangerous enemy.

I have with greater minuteness than I intended given an account of the sperm whale. Its habits and mode of capture I will describe in the course of my narrative.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

INCIDENTS OF WHALING.

Away, away the good s.h.i.+p flew to round the far-famed Cape Horn. Stern and majestic it rose on our starboard-hand; its h.o.a.ry front, as it looked down on the meeting of two mighty oceans, bore traces of many a terrific storm. Now all was calm and bright, though the vast undulations of the ocean over which the s.h.i.+p rode, as they met the resistance of the cliffs, were dashed in cataracts of spray high up in the air, and gave evidence of what would be the effect when a storm was raging across them. There was something more grand in the contemplation than in the actual appearance of the scene, when we reflected where we were--on the confines of those two great seas which encompa.s.s the earth, and which wash the sh.o.r.es of nations so different in character--the one having attained the height of civilisation, the other being still sunk in the depths of a barbarism too terrible almost for contemplation, as I afterwards had good reason to know. Then there was that strange, vast, dreamy swell--the breathings, as it were, of some giant monster. It seemed as if some wondrous force were ever acting on that vast body of water--that it could not for a moment rest quiet in its bed, but must ever go heaving on, in calm and suns.h.i.+ne as well as in storm and tempest. There was likewise in sight that wild weather-beaten sh.o.r.e, inhabited, as report declared, by men of gigantic stature and untameable fierceness; while to the south lay those mysterious frost-bound regions untrod by the foot of man--the land of vast glaciers, mighty icebergs, and wide extended fields of ice. On we sped with a favouring breeze, till we floated calmly on the smooth surface of the Pacific off the coast of Chili.

With regard to Patagonia, old Knowles told me he had been there, but that, as far as he saw, the people were not much larger than the inhabitants of many other countries. Some were big men; a few nearly seven feet high, and proportionably stout. They are capital mimics--the very parrots or magpies of the genus Man.

"I say, Jack, bear a hand there now," exclaimed one, repeating the words after a sailor who had just spoken.

"What! do you speak English, old fellow? Give us your flipper then,"

said Knowles, thinking he had found a civilised man in that distant region.

"What! do you speak English, old fellow? Give us your flipper then,"