05 Whale Adventure (10 page)

He slid down into the nearest boat. At once he was bombarded with questions.

‘Where you been?’

‘We saw you dive but you didn’t come up. What happened?’ ‘How far did he take you?’ ‘How did you get so stinkin’ bloody?’

The questions were interrupted by the big bull. Irritated by the presence of the boats, he turned to attack them. He opened his great boatsize jaws. But he was not his old self. His movements were sluggish, and the oarsmen easily pulled their craft out of his way.

The huge jaws came together with a thunderous crash. The bull sent up a last brave spout that fluttered like a red banner in the wind. A low groan came from the depths of him and he rolled over, belly up.

‘Thow a line over that tail,’ ordered the mate, ‘and we’ll tow him to the ship.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Hal. ‘First we’d better try to save the other chap.’

‘What other? Were there two of you?’

‘Yes.’

The men looked at each other understandingly. Hal’s terrifying experience must have affected his mind.

Try to calm down,’ the second mate said. ‘There isn’t any other.’

T don’t have time to explain,’ Hal said, snatching a knife. ‘If we’re quick we may get him out alive.’

Avoiding the men who tried to stop him, he leaped out on to the dead whale’s white belly. He began to make a lengthwise cut over the region of the stomach. The men looked on in astonishment, wagging their heads.

‘Crazy as a loon,’ one said.

The skin on a whale’s underside is more tender than elsewhere. Hal had soon made an opening eight feet long. If the men wanted any further proof that he was crazy, they got it when he dropped through the opening into the stomach of the whale.

He found himself in a chamber some fourteen feet long and five across, lit only by the light coming through the slit above. He felt the sting of gastric juices on his face and his bare trunk.

He wondered if anybody had ever before gone inside a whale. Probably. In Africa when an elephant is killed the hungry blacks go inside to get the heart, kidneys, and other choice portions of meat. And there is much more room in a whale than in an elephant.

Groping about, his hand struck something that might be the horny beak of a cuttlefish. Then he found his companion. He lifted him so that his head emerged from the slit along with his own.

When the men in the boats saw this strange sight they could well believe it was not Hal who had gone crazy, but they themselves. Their amazement grew when Hal climbed out, and pulled the other man out after him.

Now several men leaped up beside him and willing hands eased the still form down into the boat.

The mate tested for respiration and heartbeat. Hal hoped desperately. If a shark had been brought out alive from the stomach of a whale, why not a man? The mate finished his examination, and shook his head.

‘It was a bit too much for him.’

Two men had paid for this whale with their lives. The high cost of cold cream, Hal thought. Whale oil was used to make cold cream as well as many other useful products. But did the young woman who sat before a mirror applying cosmetics to her face realize what they had cost - not in money, but in struggle, strain, and life itself? Did the person washing his hands with soap containing whale oil realize what it had cost to put it in his hands? The users of glycerine, margarine, paints, varnishes, textiles, fertilizer, cattle fodder, vitamins made with whale-liver oil, hormones obtained from the glands of the whale, many life-saving drugs, gifts from the whale to man - did the people who made daily use of these things ever think of the men who had fought and died to provide them?

Not to mention the monarch of the sea that had perished so that his human cousins might be a little more healthy and happy.

The line was put over the tail and the long job of towing the monster back to the ship began. Meanwhile the questions continued.

Hal told how he had steered the great whale.

‘Now you’re spoofing us,’ said one man. ‘Steer a whale, my grandmother!’

But the other men were inclined to believe Hal. After all, there was the whale. Durkins turned to the expert on whales, Mr Scott. ‘What does the Professor say?’

‘Hal was lucky enough or smart enough,’ Scott said, ‘to hit on something that has been known to zoologists for a long time - that any animal with eyes in the sides of its head instead of in front will tend to favour the side with better vision. It’s a scientific fact More than that, it’s just common sense. You take more interest in what you can see than what you can’t. Suppose you had eyes in the back of your head instead of in front. Would you want to walk forward?’

‘No, backward,’ said Durkins.

‘Right. And it’s the same way with the whale. If his view is cut off to one side, he’ll edge over to the other. But not everybody would have thought of it. I think you owe Hunt your thanks for bringing home a fine whale.’

‘Bet your life!’ agreed Durkins, and the rest of the men chimed in. They began to speculate on how many barrels of oil the monster would yield and how much extra pay it would mean for every man.

‘But,’ Hal said, ‘the fellow you really ought to thank is that lookout. Without him, you wouldn’t have had a whale. He must have been pretty sharp, because the whale was low in the water and wasn’t spouting white.’

‘Do you want to know who the lookout was?’ asked Durkins.

‘I certainly do.’

‘He was your kid brother.’

Hal grinned at Roger and his heart was pretty full. There was a lot he wanted to say, but all he could say now was: ‘Good job!’

The kid wouldn’t believe us when we told him you were dead,’ the mate went on. ‘Guess he knew you were a hard nut to crack. He pestered the Captain till Grindle let him go up in the rings and watch.’

‘I thought I might see you hanging on to a piece of wreckage somewhere,’ Roger said. ‘Then this whale came along. I didn’t see you on its back but I had a sort of hunch you weren’t far away.’

‘You sure surprised us when you popped up over that whale’s back,’ Durkins said. ‘I hope to see the Cap’s face when his eyes light on you. He thinks you’re at the bottom of the sea.’

A sudden shadow fell upon the boats. The men looked up to see that a dark grey mist had swallowed the sun.

From the cloud-bank long tails of mist spiralled down to the sea.

‘Fog!’ said Durkins., ‘In ten minutes we won’t be able to see a thing. Pull, boys, while you can still see the ship.’

Heavy wet curtains of fog settled down until they brushed the wave-tops. Seen through the curtains, the ship came and went as if it was only a dream, not an actual vessel on a real ocean. The men looked uneasy. Sailors are superstitious, and to their minds the sea is never so mysterious as when veiled in fog. It is at such times that the Flying Dutchman is seen, or imagined. And such ghostly visions appear as those described by Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

A sighing sound came from the heavens. Some of the men fingered charms that hung round their necks, and their lips moved as they repeated silently magical words that were supposed to fend off the evil eye. Now the ship was gone and the fog closed in like a smothering blanket over the boats.

The mate tried to pep up his men: ‘It won’t last long. Keep at it, boys. Only a cable’s length to go.’

At one moment there was nothing ahead. At the next moment the boats were ramming their noses into the hull of the Killer. A man clambered up the ship’s fore-chains with the whale’s tow-line and made it fast. The boats were eased back to the rope ladder that rose to the deck.

The fog was so heavy that the men in the boats could not see Captain Grindle at the top of the ladder, nor could the captain see them. But he could hear their voices and the clugging of the oars in the oarlocks.

‘Ahoy, down there!’ called the captain.

It was the second mate who should have called back. Instead, he put his finger to his lips, signalling his men to be quiet. Then he whispered to Hal:

‘Let’s give the old geezer the scare of his life. You go up alone. I’ll bet he’ll think you’re a zombie.’

Hal climbed the rope ladder. He tried to move without making a sound. He raised his face and saw Captain Grindle looking down. The captain’s eyes were great balls of terror. He tried to speak, but could not. He backed away from the rail as Hal rose before him.

The fog-blinded captain could see very little and could not believe what he saw. This thing, plastered with red from head to foot, looked more like a demon than a man. It reminded Grindle of the Gent. But it could not be. The Gent was drowned and a funeral service had been said over him.

This vision, appearing and disappearing through the fog, must be his ghost. It had come back to take revenge. The captain suddenly regretted that he had ever insulted the Gent or threatened him with a flogging.

Hal stood up on the gunwale. His burning eyes looking out from the mask of blood terrified the captain. Grindle backed away, muttering: ‘No, no!’ And again: ‘No, no! Don’t.’

The other men were now climbing to the deck to see the fun. Hal spread his arms as if he were about to take off from his perch on the gunwale and fly at his enemy. The captain, still backing up, stumbled against the rim of a pan of porridge that the cook had put out to cool and sat down in it, splashing the pasty stuff in all directions.

He was up again in a hurry and retreated to the companionway that led down to his cabin.

At this distance he felt safer and began to bluster.

‘You, whoever you are, get down off that rail. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you down.’ He began to reach back for his revolver.

Before he could touch it, Hal was swinging towards him at the end of a clew-line from the mainsail yard-arm. The fog hid the line. All the captain could see was an indistinct something flying straight towards him through mid-air like an angel of Satan.

With a bellow of fear he started down the companionway, lost his footing, tumbled and bumped all the way to the bottom, scrambled into his cabin and locked the door.

He lay trembling in his bunk, fearfully watching the door. A phantom that could float through the air could certainly come through a locked door. Or through a porthole. One of the portholes was open and he crawled over to close it, but before he could do so he heard a strange sound.

Roars of laughter drifted down from the deck. All his men were screaming with joy. What was so funny? He listened to catch any words. He heard shouts of: ‘Good boy, Hunt!’ ‘You gave him a proper fright.’ ‘That will teach the old bully.’ ‘Three cheers for Hunt!’

The captain stopped trembling. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and a cold rage crept over him.

So they were laughing at him. The thing he had seen was not a ghost, it was Hunt himself. But how could that be? He had buried Hunt and logged him as dead. The log-book lay open on the desk and there was the entry:

Seaman Hal Hunt, losing his life through his own carelessness and stupidity, was this day consigned to the sea with all due rites of funeral, though undeserving of such honour.

There it was. He was dead and gone and buried, but he was alive and on deck at this very moment. There should be a law against this sort of thing. A man once logged dead had no right to come back. It was a breach of discipline and ought to be punished.

The captain had so enjoyed writing that item in that log - now he regretfully crossed it out. This spoiled the appearance of the page: that was Hal’s fault and he would have to suffer for it. The captain was now boiling with resentment and injured pride. They would laugh at him, would they? Well, he would have the last laugh.

He took out his revolver and made sure that every chamber was full. He was the only man on board with a gun. That thought made him swell up with importance. It did not occur to him that only a coward would use a gun against unarmed men.

Thanks to his gun he could command obedience. He would make an example of this Hunt, such a terrible example that no man on board would ever forget it. This fellow must be flogged within an inch of his life. Forty strokes of the cat was the usual punishment on the Killer - this time it would be eighty. With what pleasure he would write it down in his log!

Why not write it now? Then he would be bound to carry it through. Nothing could stop him. He would have to do it because it was already written. He wrote:

On this day, Seaman Hal Hunt, guilty of defying established authority, received eighty lashes.

There it was, in black and white, and this time he would not have to cross it out. It was going to be done, and at once.

Gritting his teeth on this resolve the captain unlocked the door and went up the companionway, gun in hand. At the top, he peered round the door-jamb to see what was going on.

The men were marching round the deck carrying Hal Hunt on their shoulders. They were laughing, cheering, shouting: ‘Hooray for Hunt!’

With a grim smile on his porcupine face, Captain Grindle aimed his revolver just above the head of the man who had returned from the grave.

He fired. The bullet whizzed above the crew and thudded into the mainmast. The men stopped cheering. Hal was dropped to the deck. Some of the men ran to the fo’c’sle. Others hid behind the masts.

Captain Grindle, much pleased with the effect of his shot, strode out on to the deck. He was every inch the master, and he gloried in the feeling.

‘Bruiser!’ he bawled. ‘Come forward!’

The ex-prizefighter stepped out, cringing like a small boy. T didn’t do anything, sir,’ he said, his eye on the captain’s gun.

‘Spread-eagle that man!’

‘What man?’

‘The Gent.’

An angry murmur ran through the crowd. Bruiser stood irresolute. Second mate Durkins cast about for a way to gain time.

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘the man the whale got - his body is in the boat. Shouldn’t we give him a funeral first?’

‘He’s already had his funeral. Tell Sails to stitch him up in a piece of canvas and dump him overboard.’

The man nicknamed Sails because it was his job to look after the ship’s canvas, retired to perform this unhappy duty.