05 Whale Adventure (8 page)

Then he struck the water and went deep into it. Clawing his way upward he collided with the underside of a whale. Hal’s breath had already been knocked out of him and if he could not get to the surface very soon he would drown.

Which way should he go? He should try to come out on the flank, but he could not tell how the whale lay. If by mistake he went towards the rear a whip of the tail might knock him senseless. If he went forward it would be an even greater mistake.

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He swam, his back brushing against the whale’s hide. He kept groping for a flipper. If he found one he would know that he was on the whale’s flank and could come up to breathe.

Presently his hand grasped something that might be a flipper. He was about to pull himself up when he realized that this was no flipper - it was the edge of the whale’s lower jaw. He was practically inviting himself to dinner. One snap of that great mouth and Hal Hunt would go to join his ancestors.

He backed off at once and came up at the whale’s right side behind the fin. He had never thought to see the boat again, but there it was right-side up. It had landed luckily and had very little water in it. Oars and gear floated all about. Hal, after a deep breath or two to replenish his starved lungs, joined with the other men in collecting the floating articles, chucking them back into the boat and climbing in after them. Third mate Brown counted heads. Not a man was missing.

‘All right, boys,’ said Brown, raising his voice to be heard above the spouts and splashes of the whales. ‘You’re lucky to be alive. Oars! Let’s get out of here.’

‘Easier said than done!’ growled Bruiser.

The boat rammed head-on into a whale.

‘Try backing up,’ commanded the third mate.

A few strokes backward and the way was blocked by an uncle.

The boat was trapped in whales. It lay in a bit of water no bigger than’ a swimming-pool, with whales all round it. They closed in upon it. The big bull, smarting from his wound, began to rush off across the sea, and all the others with him. The whole pod moved like one animal, and snugly packed in the centre was the whaleboat, in peril of being crushed at any moment between the great flanks.

And yet even at such a time a whaleman thinks of barrels of oil. Brown seized the lance and went forward. The boat was snugged up tightly to the side of the big bull. It was a perfect set-up for a killing. A perfect chance for Brown to kill the whale, an equally perfect chance that the whale and his pals would kill every man aboard.

Brown stood in the bow with lance raised. He was enveloped in spray thrown up by the speeding boat, and thrown down by the spouting whales. He looked like a statue in a fountain.

The lance went home. Deep, deep it went, and the whale in one convulsive movement it struck the water with its head and tail, raising its middle so that it looked like a great blade arch over the waves.

‘Back away!’ yelled Brown.

But there was no room to back away. The eighty-foot arch came down with a thunderous crash, barely missing the boat. The wave produced by the fall of some one hundred and twenty tons of whale washed the boat high up on to the flank of an uncle, from which it slid back into the sea, still right side up but full of water to the gunwales.

The men bailed furiously, expecting another attack at any moment. But they looked up to see with astonishment that the big whale had left them. It was swimming away from the pod.

The reason was plain. The ship had drawn nearer, and the great whale in its agony was about to attack it.

If that rock-hard head collided squarely with the keel below the water-line the timbers would be stove in.

Many a sailing ship had been sunk in this fashion, and occasionally a vessel under steam power or diesel.

Grindle in the rings could be heard bawling orders to the helmsman. The ship began to veer to port. The whale was ploughing ahead at a good twenty knots. The men watched anxiously. Would the ship turn in time?’

Whale and ship met. Men breathed again. It had not been a square hit. The whale struck the vessel’s side a glancing blow and slid off towards the stern. The vessel shook itself like a dog and the sails shivered, but her hull was still sound beneath her.

The whale did not try again. He seemed to remember that he had some unfinished business to attend to. Back he came towards the boat, whose deadly irons were already draining away his life. He was still spouting, but now his spout blazed blood-red.

‘His chimney’s afire!’ yelled one of the men.

The monster sank out of sight.

‘He’s done for!’ shouted one.

‘No such luck!’ came the voice of the second mate whose boat was still held off by the circling uncle. He called to Brown:

‘Look out below!’

‘Aye aye, sir!’

Brown and his crew looked over the gunwales into the depths. Hal at first could see nothing. Then he made out a small white spot. It seemed only as big as a hand, but it was rising and it rapidly grew in size as it rose.

Then he could make it out plainly. It was the open mouth of the bull whale. The enormous teeth, each as big as Hal’s head, were ready for action.

‘Full astern!’ yelled Brown.

The men pulled, but it was no use. A whale blocked the way, and there was another ahead. With terrible speed the open jaws rose towards the middle of the boat. The men tumbled out of the way, some aft, some forward. One man was not quick enough. He was caught between the two twenty-foot jaws as they closed in, one on either side of the boat, and crushed it like an eggshell.

The two ends of the crippled craft drifted apart, men in the water clinging to them, and thanking their stars they had something to cling to.

What had happened to the man who had been caught? There was just a chance that he lay unharmed in the beast’s mouth and would be thrown out when the jaws opened. Hal watched anxiously.

But when the great mouth sprang open it was empty. The monster that could attack and devour a cuttlefish almost as large as itself had had no difficulty in swallowing this human morsel.

If the man had escaped being injured by the closing teeth, was he still alive? It was a fantastic thought. However, there was the story of Jonah and the whale, a story that was supposed to be based upon fact. The stomach of a whale was as big as a good-sized cupboard. There might possibly be enough air in it to sustain life for a short time. Now and then a shark, still alive, has been taken from a whale’s stomach. But a man is not so tough as a shark.

The mad bull thrashed about among the wreckage, his great jaws crunching everything within reach. The men had to let go their hold upon the pieces of the boat and swim to one side. There was always the danger of an attack by the other whales. Sharks had been drawn by the smell of blood and Hal splashed vigorously to keep them off.

He yelled a warning to one of his companions as he saw a shark about to seize his foot. The man, numbed by fear and cold, did not act in time. The razor teeth closed on his leg and he was drawn down.

Hal at once dived down in the hope of rescuing him. He explored the blue depths in vain. There were plenty of sharks about, but no sign of the man and the shark that had taken him.

He battled his way back through the gleaming silver bodies to the surface and came up by the rolling flank of the big whale.

His hand struck something hard and cold. It was the harpoon in the whale’s neck. Instinctively he grasped it and felt himself lifted out of the water and carried away at high speed.

The bull, having destroyed the boat, had now changed his tactics and was trying to run from the pain that tormented him. The rest of the pod followed at a slower pace. Sharks snapped alongside and Hal drew his feet up out of their way. He was thankful to the big bull. The monster that he had been helping to kill was now saving him.

He looked back and saw with relief that the two other boats were now able to come in and pick up the survivors.

Would anyone think about him? Some of them must have seen him dive, but perhaps no one had seen him rise again, because he had come up on the off side of the whale. They could not know what a wild ride he was getting.

Many a man had ridden horseback, camel-back, elephant-back, and even ostrich-back, but who had ever gone for a ride whale-back?

In other circumstances he might have thought it was great sport. It was like riding on the bridge of a submarine before it submerges.

Submerges. That was an unhappy thought. If this living submarine took a notion to dive, what would happen to its rider?

The bull, as if the same idea had just occurred to him, slid below the surface. Hal caught his breath as his head went under, and held on grimly. Perhaps this was just a surface dive. On the other hand it might be a ‘sound’, a dive far down to a depth of as much as a quarter of a mile. The whale might stay down for an hour. Three minutes of that would be quite enough to exhaust Hal’s air, and the terrific pressure would crush him as flat and dead as a pancake.

But he had no sooner thought of these things than his head rose again above the waves. The whale sent up a terrific spout of blood and steam. And Hal remembered being told that a whale spouting blood never sounds, perhaps because its pierced lungs and drained arteries cannot retain enough oxygen for a long stay under water. However this may be, the big bull made only brief dips below water, coming up within a minute or so.

Every time he emerged he blasted more blood into the air which showered down upon Hal until he was so plastered from head to toe that his own mother would not have known him.

Wherever this deposit touched his skin it stung like fire. It was not the blood that caused this violent irritation, but the poison gases expelled from the monster’s lungs. The wind blew these vapours back upon Hal along with the blood.

During a whale’s stay of a half hour or an hour beneath the sea the pure air with which it has filled its lungs gradually changes, much as it does in the human body. Perhaps if a human could bottle up his breath for a half-hour or an hour it would, when expelled, be poisonous too.

The whale’s spout is not kind to any living thing that gets In its way. A sailor who looked over the gunwale of his ship just as a whale below happened to spout got the blast full in his face; the skin itched terribly and a day later peeled off so that he looked as if he had come through a fire. Fortunately his eyes had automatically closed when the jet struck him. Eyes fully exposed to the fumes may be seriously damaged or even blinded.

If the healthy whale’s spout is poisonous, the breath of a wounded whale is much more so. Again, the whale is like you and me. When we are sick or suffering or badly worried, the breath is not apt to be as sweet as when we are healthy and happy.

Hal, feeling the smart on his skin, was learning the hard way about the breathing of a whale and prudently closed his eyes whenever it spouted.

He looked back anxiously. No one was coming to his rescue. The two surviving boats had gone back to the ship. His mad race had covered more than a mile and every moment he was being carried farther and farther away.

Should he slide off into the sea and try to swim back? He would never make it. The water was alive with sharks. On both sides of the blood-spouting whale their long silver bodies flashed through the water as they kept up with the monster that they hoped soon to devour. The picture of the seaman hauled down by the shark was still fresh in Hal’s mind. He had no desire to go to Davy Jones’s locker by that route. His only chance was to hang on, and hope.

Would this great bull ever give up? He still ploughed along like a speed-boat. As the distance lengthened the ship gradually sank below the horizon. Now the hull was gone, the deck had disappeared. He could still see the masts, but they were steadily growing shorter.

He strained his eyes, hoping to see someone at the masthead. There was no lookout in the rings. Captain Grindle had gone down when the whale had attacked the ship.

Probably right now, thought Hal, they’re holding a funeral service for those two poor fellows.

He was almost right. A funeral service was being held, but it was for three poor fellows, not two. Hal was counted among the dead. Roger was roused from his bunk to hear the sad news.

‘Sorry, kid,’ said third mate Brown. ‘Your brother dived to help a chum who had just been pulled down by a shark. That’s the last we saw of either of them.’

‘But you don’t really know that he died,’ Roger insisted.

‘Look, kid,’ Brown explained patiently, ‘when a man goes down and doesn’t come up, there’s only one answer. The boats that came in to pick us up - they rowed all over the place to make sure they weren’t missing anybody. No use fooling yourself. The sharks got him. We looked everywhere. You can trust us. We know our business.’

‘But you don’t know my brother. He’s met sharks before and he didn’t let them take him. I’ll bet he’s alive. Couldn’t we go out and look again?’

‘It ain’t no use,’ said Brown. ‘But if you want to ask the Captain -‘ Roger at once went to Captain Grindle. ‘Captain, may we take out a boat and look for my brother?’

The captain looked as indignant as if he had been asked to send a boat to the moon.

‘You impudent young squirt, what do you think we are? Do you suppose we have nothing to do but hunt for gents who don’t know enough to take care of themselves?’

‘But that’s just it,’ said Roger. ‘He does know how to take care of himself. That’s why I feel he’s still alive.’

‘And where d’you suppose he’d be?’ sneered Grindle. ‘In a mermaid’s palace at the bottom of the sea, I suppose. He wasn’t afloat, or he woulda sung out when the boats went looking. Or perhaps you think he got flung so high in the air that he hasn’t come down yet.’ He grinned his evil sarcastic grin, then turned harsh again. ‘We’ve done all we can for your fool brother. We gave him a nice funeral service, some pretty words from Holy Scriptures, and a watery grave. Your brother just wasn’t tough enough for this life. It should be a lesson to all gents who think they’re real he-men.’

He gripped Roger by the shoulder and brought his porcupine beard uncomfortably close to the boy’s face. ‘And if you really want to know what I think happened to your brother, I’ll tell you. He knew he was going to be flogged within an inch of his life if he came back to this ship. That put him in a funk. When a man is scared he can’t defend himself. Your brother was scared and the sharks got him.’