Читать книгу Wild Adventures in Wild Places - Stables Gordon - Страница 5

“I feel,” said the captain one day, at breakfast, “that I am making a dangerous experiment. I am keeping far in to the west land; I am all but hugging the shore; and if it were to come on to blow from seawards, we would – Steward, I’ll have another cup of coffee.”

“You think,” said Chisholm, “our chances of further cups of coffee wouldn’t be very great, eh?”

“I don’t think they would,” said the captain. “Well, lads, I’ve shown you a bit of sport, haven’t I? And if we had only a little more blubber in her, troth, I’d bear up for bonnie Scotland. I’ve just come down from the crow’s-nest, and what do you think I’ve spied? Why, open water for miles ahead, stretching away to the north as far as eyes can reach. There are whales there, boys, if we can but wait for them.”

After breakfast it was, “All hands assist ship!”

Up sprang the men, and ere one could wink, so to speak, half the crew were at the side with poles, pressing on the ice to make room for the Grampus. It was strange work, and it seemed at first impossible that twenty men with a spar could move a floe. But they did, and three hours afterwards they were in this mysterious open sea.

“Why,” cried Frank, “I declare there is the Dutchman dodging yonder with foreyard aback. A sailing ship beat a steamer!”

“Ay, she’s got the pull on us, boys,” the captain said. “And see, she is flenshing (skinning) a whale; the crang (the skinned corpse) lies beside her. She has met with a lane of open water, and taken advantage of it.”

Just at that moment came the cry, “A fall! a fall! on the weather quarter!”

“A fall! a fall!” Surely never was excitement seen like this before, thought Frank.

There was no waiting for orders. The ship seemed to stop of her own accord, and the escaping steam roared uselessly through the funnel.

“A fall! a fall!” Up tumble the men, many undressed, with their clothes in a bundle. They spring to the boats, our heroes follow the example, and in three minutes more are tearing through the water towards the coveted leviathan. The Dutchman has spied the monster too, and her boats are soon afloat. Who shall be first?

(The origin of this cry is this, I think. “Whaol” is the ordinary Scotch for “whale,” but Aberdonians use the “f” instead of the “wh” in such words as “what,” “where,” etc, which they pronounce “fat” and “far.” Hence “whale” would become “faul,” or “fall.”)

“Pull, lads, pull! Hurrah, lads, hurrah! We’ll never let a Dutchman beat us!”

Is the whale asleep, that she lies so quietly? Nay, for now she scents the danger, and, lashing her tail madly skywards, is off; but not before the roar of the harpoon gun from the foremost boat has awakened the echoes of the Greenland sea.

“A fall! a fall! She is struck! she is struck!” Vainly now she dashes through the surging sea; another boat pulls around to intercept her, and again she is struck; the lines whirl over the gunwale of Frank’s boat till it smokes again. There is blood now in the great beast’s wake, and her way is not so swift; she dives and dives again, but she is breathless now. Dreadful her wound must be – for see, she is spouting water mingled with blood; and now she lies still on the surface of the ocean.

“In line, men!” cries the mate, springing up and seizing his long lance, and standing bravely up in the bows. “Pull gently alongside, and stand by to back water the moment I spear the fall.”

“How bold and daring he looks!” thinks Frank; all thought of danger swallowed up in admiration of the man who stands, spear in hand, in the boat’s bows.

They are close now. Swish! Quick as lightning the spear is sent home; quickly it is turned, to sever the carotid; next moment the backing boat is almost swamped in blood. But not quickly enough can they back, I fear, to save the boat from destruction, themselves from speedy death. High, high in air is raised that dreadful tail; half the animal seems out of the water; they are under the shadow of it; and now it descends, and every oar on the port-side of the boat is broken off close to the rowlocks. But the boat is saved. For fully half an hour the whale flaps the sea in her dying agony, and the noise may be heard for miles around, while the waters around her are churned into crimson foam. Then there is one more terrible convulsion; her great jaw opens and shuts again. The leviathan is dead. The men of the brig and the men in the boats answer each other with boisterous cheers; but the Dutchman fills her sails, puts about, and bears sullenly up for the south.

Well would it have been for the Grampus had Captain Anderson followed her example; but he would not.

“She can go,” he said; “she is a full ship, and only a sailing ship. Now let us get but two other ‘fish,’ then hey for the sunny south, boys.”

For a whole month they remained dodging about in that open sea, but without seeing another whale. All their good luck seemed to have gone with the Dutchman, and the captain was about to bear up, and force his way once more out through the southern ice to the open sea beyond, when suddenly a change came o’er the spirit of the scene. To their surprise, if not to their horror, the ice began to close in around them in all directions. Nearer and nearer came the mighty floes. They came from the north; they came from the south and the east; they even deployed into two long lines, or horns, that crept along the land until they met. At the same time a heavy swell began to roll in from seawards.

“There is a gale of wind outside,” the captain said to Chisholm, “and this is the result; but come, I don’t mean to be caught like a mouse in a trap.” Then, addressing the mate, “Call all hands, Mr Lewis. Get out the ice-saws and anchors.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the mate.

“Now, my lads,” continued the captain, when the men came aft in a body, “you’ve all been to Greenland before, and you know the danger we are in as well as I can tell you. If we are caught between two floes in that heaving pack, we’ll be crunched like a walnut-shell. So we’ll have to work to make a harbour. That alone can save us. Call the steward. Steward! we’ll splice the main brace.”