05 Whale Adventure (14 page)

‘Why not?’ Roger asked. ‘I think it will be fun to see them playing around.’

Scott smiled and shook his head. ‘They may play rough.’

‘But we’re safe enough,’ said Roger. ‘They couldn’t do anything to the ship.’

‘I hope not,’ said Scott doubtfully.

When it was too dark to see more the mate and the lookouts came down from the rings. Mate Durkins and his men stood by the rail, listening.

The whales were now all about the ship. Their spouts whooshed up like rockets.

‘Keep out of the way of those spouts,’ the mate warned. ‘You’ll get gassed.’

Hal had already learned this lesson. Most of the men prudently retreated when a whale came too close. One man whose curiosity got the better of him looked down on a whale’s head just as the column of gas and steam rose into his face. He was half blinded and went to his bunk with medicated compresses over his eyes.

The whales were a talkative lot. As they dipped, swooped, and slid about, they grunted like rhinoceroses, squealed like elephants, and bellowed like bulls. Hal remembered the groans of the suffering whale that had carried him so far across the sea. But he had not imagined that the monsters could make so many different sounds.

Evidently they were highly excited. They were having fun with the ship. Perhaps they instinctively knew that they were terrifying the humans on board.

They dived beneath the vessel on one side and came up on the other. One shot up so high that his great box of a head was above the deck. His skull was twice as big as the crate that is used to pack a grand piano. He dropped again into the sea with a thundering splash that sent a shower of spray over, the men on deck.

One took to butting the rudder. The wheel was jerked out of the helmsman’s hands and went spinning. Luckily the playful beast desisted from this game before completely wrecking the steering-gear of the ship. There was a crackle and crash up forward. ‘There goes the bowsprit,’ exclaimed the mate. He went to investigate. The bowsprit was gone, probably swept away by one flirt of a big bull’s tail. The flying jib, the jib, and the staysail, previously made fast to the bowsprit, hung in rags.

A monster coming up from beneath lifted the ship a good three feet, then let it drop. The masts shivered and cracked, the sails shook, men sat down hard on the deck, and there was a great clatter in the galley as all the pans on the walls tumbled down on the surprised cook.

‘If this is their idea of fun,’ said the mate, T only hope they don’t get serious. Last year a whale gave us a crack that stove in two strakes. Luckily we were near land, but the bark was half full of water before we made port.’

‘But a whale can’t actually sink a ship, can it?’ asked Roger.

‘Not only can, but does. There was the Essex. She was struck by a big sperm just forward of the fore-chains. It busted her wide open and the pump couldn’t save her.

The crew had only ten minutes to abandon ship. They got away in three boats. One boat was lost. One got to Chile. One landed on an uninhabited island where the men managed to live on bird’s eggs until they were picked up five months later.’

‘What an experience!’ Hal said.

‘Oh, there’ve been lots of others like it. A whale hit a Peruvian sloop so hard that the men were shaken out of their hammocks and the captain was thrown out of his cabin. Everybody thought the ship had struck a rock.

They sounded, but found only deep water. Then the whale came back to finish the job. This time he cracked open the hull just above the kelson and sank the ship.

‘And perhaps you’ve heard of the Ann Alexander. A whale they had lanced attacked the ship just abreast the foremast. One whack was enough. The men only had time to tumble into the boats and row clear before the ship went down.’

The mate was rudely interrupted by a whale that thrust its head out of the wave and said ‘Rrump!’ before sinking back into the sea. Durkins continued.

‘Then there was the Parker Cook. A mad whale had to hit it three times before he smashed it. And the Pocahontas. Her captain was only twenty-eight, and that’s pretty young for a master, so the crew called him the boy-captain. He was pretty smart. After a whale stove in his ship, he kept the pumps going at two hundred and fifty strokes an hour and set out for the nearest port. It was Rio, seven hundred and fifty miles away, but the boy-captain made it.’

‘Is it always the sperm that does the damage?’ Roger wanted to know.

‘Oh no. A finback hulled a hundred-foot craft, the Dennis Gale, off Eureka, California. And along the same coast in 1950 a large yacht, the Lady Linda, was smashed by a blue whale.’

‘I suppose,’ Hal said, ‘those were all wooden ships. Could a whale do anything to a steel hull?’

‘I can tell you something about that,’ Scott said. ‘Not so long ago a steamer with a steel hull had its plates pushed open by a huge humpback. The break was through the side of the vessel at the coal bunkers. The inrush of water put out the fires and sank the ship in three minutes.’

He paused to smile at the startled look on the boys’

faces, then went on.

‘You’ve heard of the great explorer, Roy Chapman Andrews, former director of my museum. He made a study of whales, just as I’m trying to do now. His steamer was nearly sunk by a big sperm, but it lost its enthusiasm when it ran into the propeller and the whirling blades ripped the blubber off its nose.

‘Just to give you an idea of the strength of a whale -Dr Andrews tells of the big blue they snagged with a heavy line. That whale dragged the ship forward at six knots, and all the time the engines were at full speed astern! Altogether it towed the steamer thirty miles.

‘And he tells of a finback that came at a steamer at high speed and crushed her side like an eggshell. The crew was hardly able to get a small boat over before she went down.

‘Of course,’ Scott added, ‘an ocean liner or a freighter is safe enough. But Dr Andrews reported many cases of whales sinking ships up to three hundred or four hundred tons.’

Hal’s eye roamed over the Killer. Her tonnage was

considerably under three hundred and there was no steel in her sides.

‘You’ll be scaring the lads,’ said Durkins. 1 don’t think so,’ said Scott. ‘They don’t scare so easily. Anyhow, I think we’re in no danger tonight. “These rascals are just playing. You haven’t hurt them yet. But what do you plan to do tomorrow morning? If you stick one of these rogues with a harpoon I think you are in for trouble.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Durkins. ‘But we’ll have to risk that. After all, our business is whaling. There’s a lot of oil out there, and we’ve got to go after it, trouble or no trouble.’

No one on board the whaler slept well that night.

It was an all-night party for the rogue whales. They snorted and squealed like beasts of the jungle. They spouted with a sound like that of a steamer when it blows its stacks, or a steam locomotive when it lets off pressure.

The men in the bunks no sooner began to drift off to sleep than they were roused by the bumping of a mammoth body against the hull or a curious rubbing sound when a monster scraped his back across the keel. Now and then the ship bounced up and down like a wagon going over a rough road. The ship’s timbers strained and creaked. Boots on the floor hopped about as if unseen sailors were dancing in them. Whale-oil lamps swung and shivered in their gimbals.

Roger sat up in Ms bunk with eyes popping when he heard the rush of a whale coming at tremendous speed towards the ship. He waited for the smash of the great head against the timbers.

But the big mischief-maker was just amusing himself.

Instead of crashing head-on into the hull, he must have raised his head at the last moment and struck the rail a glancing blow. There was a crackling, splintering sound as the heavy body smashed the gunwales. Roger heard Hal in the bunk below mutter:

That was a close one.’

Roger lay down again, plugged both ears with his shirt, and tried to sleep.

‘All hands on deck!’ came the call at dawn.

Usually this call brought a chorus of groans and mutterings from sleepy sailors. This time there was none of that. They could hardly wait to get a crack at their nighttime visitors. In two minutes every man was on deck. The cook dealt out coffee and hardtack.

The whales had drawn off about a quarter of a mile from the ship and were indulging in a sort of gigantic leapfrog, playfully jumping over each other in great graceful curves.

‘Man the boats!’ ordered the mate. ‘Lower away!’

The ship had been equipped with four whaleboats and a dory. One whaleboat had already been smashed. The other three now put down and pulled away from the Killer’s side.

Hal, in the bow of the mate’s boat, was to have his first experience as a harpooner. Scott with his cameras was in the second boat, and Roger in the third. The men all pulled lustily, each crew eager to get there first.

In the excitement of the chase no one worried about the danger. This was no ordinary whale-hunt. They were about to break up a party of gangsters, the world’s biggest. So far the gangsters were only playful, but what would they do when they felt the cold iron? But just so long as men, women, and children in far cities wanted the things that whales could provide, whalers must take chances.

‘We’ll make it!’ cried the mate. ‘Bend your backs. Blister your hands. Three more pulls!’

His boat was the first to break into the circle of monsters. Hugging the steering-oar, he directed the boat alongside the largest bull. ‘All right, Hunt! Hop to it.’

Hal dropped the bow-oar, seized the harpoon, and stood up. His legs were uncertain under him. His mind was uncertain too. He wanted to succeed in his new task. But he hated to kill. He gritted his teeth, poised the harpoon, and waited as the boat slid up to the monster’s Deck. ‘Now!’ cried Durkins.

As if in a bad dream, Hal felt Ms arm fly forward and the harpoon leave his hand. The harpoon went in all the way. ‘Couldn’t be better,’ yelled Durkins. ‘Back off!’ As the ship had trembled when butted during the night, so the great whale trembled now. His black hide rippled like water from stem to stern. He seemed to wonder what had struck him. The men waited anxiously. Perhaps he would set off and tow the boat on another ‘Nantucket sleigh ride’. Perhaps he would sound a thousand feet deep and drag the boat after him.

But the big bull did not try to run away. He angled about so that his weak eye could see what had bothered him. Then he came straight for the boat with open jaws. ‘Overboard!’ shouted the mate. The men tumbled into the water. The whale took the boat bow on. The mouth from front to back was more than long enough to accommodate a twenty-foot boat.

The monster was a good ninety feet, and thirty feet of him was head. Only the sperm among whales has a head one-third of the length of the body.

So the bow of that boat never tickled his tonsils before he closed his teeth upon its stern. The men who had leaped into the water sank a few feet below its surface, and when they came up again they looked about in amazement.

‘Where’s the boat?’

There was no sign of it - not even a floating oar.

Then the monster tossed up that mighty head, as big and boxlike as a caravan. He opened his jaws and with a push of his five-ton tongue threw out fragments and splinters of what ten seconds before had been a whaleboat

Clinging to these scraps, the men anxiously watched the huge black bodies milling about them.

They were used to whales that swim away from danger. These whales did not try to escape. Instead, they seemed about to attack.

They circled around the floating men, snapping their great jaws, thrashing the water into foam with their flukes.

The men looked for the other boats. Surely one of them would come to the rescue.

But they, too, were having trouble. In the third mate’s boat the big harpooner Jimson had struck home. The harpooned whale angrily turned upon his enemies, dived, came up under the boat, and tossed it twenty feet into the air.

For a moment the sky was full of flying arms and legs as the men who had been spilled out of the boat fell to the sea. Then the bull savagely smashed the boat with his tail.

He disappeared for a moment, then came rushing back to crunch the floating wood to bits.

The one remaining boat now drew in to pick up the survivors. The big bulls, blowing like thunder, kept circling about, but by great good fortune every man was saved.

With three crews on board the boat was so crowded that any further attempt to capture a whale was out of the question. Loaded to within an inch of the water it laboured slowly back to the ship. The angry whales went along with it. Their beating flukes sent up showers of spray. Again and again they dived beneath the boat and the men held their breath, expecting to be tossed sky high. What a relief when they were back on deck and the lone whaleboat was swinging from its davits!

The relief did not last long. The whales, instead of taking themselves off, now began to threaten the ship.

Boiling with rage they swam round and round, tail-swiped the hull with resounding whacks, scraped be neath the keel.

‘Square the yards!’ the mate commanded. ‘Let’s get out of this -fast!’

The sails filled and the ship got under way. For a bark it made good speed, but not good enough. Its ten knots was insufficient to shake off enemies who could easily go twenty.

Suddenly there was a smashing sound astern. The wheel was usually hard to turn - but now it spun idly in the helmsman’s hands. Third mate Brown ran aft to inspect the damage.

‘The rudder!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s gone. One of those brutes has snapped it off.’ Rudderless, the ship fell off course. With her sails slatting, and yards banging against the masts, she slowed to a drift, rocking lazily in the waves..

Now she was a sitting duck at the mercy of the bulls of the sea. It was just a question as to which one would strike the final blow.

A sperm-whale’s forehead is straight up and down like a cliff. It is almost as hard and tough as iron. It has been compared to the inside of a horse’s hoof, so firm that a lance or harpoon cannot make the slightest dent in it. The eyes and ears are ten feet or more behind the forehead. They cannot be injured if the whale decides to use his head as a battering ram.