We slipped out of Turtle bay one moonlight night and stood southward. We were now in whale waters and the crews of the whale boats were selected. Captain Winchester was to head the starboard boat; Mr. Landers the larboard boat; and Gabriel the waist boat. Long John was to act as boatsteerer for Mr. Winchester, Little Johnny for Mr. Landers, and Mendez for Gabriel. The whale boats were about twenty-five feet long, rigged with leg-of-mutton sails and jibs. The crew of each consisted of an officer known as a boat-header, who sat in the stern and the tiller; a boatsteerer or , whose position was in the bow; and four sailors who pulled the stroke, midship, tub, and bow . Each boat had a tub in which four hundred of whale line were coiled and carried two and a shoulder bomb-gun. I was assigned to the midship of Gabriel's boat.
Let me take occasion just here to correct a false impression quite generally held regarding whaling. Many persons—I think, most persons—have an idea that in modern whaling, harpoons are fired at whales from the decks of ships. This is true only of 'long-shore whaling. In this trade, finbacks and the less valuable varieties of whales are chased by small steamers which fire harpoons from guns in the bows and tow the whales they kill to factories along shore, where blubber, flesh, and skeleton are turned into commercial products. Many published articles have familiarized the public with this method of whaling. But whaling on the sperm grounds of the tropics and on the right whale and bowhead grounds of the polar seas is much the same as it has always been. Boats still go on the backs of whales. Harpoons are thrown by hand into the great animals as of yore. Whales still run away with the boats, pulling them with amazing speed through walls of split water. Whales still crush boats with blows of their flukes and spill their crews into the sea.
There is just as much danger and just as much thrill and excitement in the whaling of to-day as there was in that of a century ago. Neither steamers nor sailing that cruise for sperm and bowhead and right whales nowadays have deck guns of any sort, but depend upon the bomb-guns attached to harpoons and upon shoulder bomb-guns wielded from the whale boats.
In the old days, after whales had been , they were stabbed to death with long, razor-sharp lances. The lance is a thing of the past. The tonite bomb has taken its place as an instrument of destruction. In the use of the tonite bomb lies the chief difference between modern whaling and the whaling of the old school.
The modern is the same as it has been since the palmy days of the old South Sea sperm fisheries. But fastened on its iron between the wooden handle and the spear point is a an inch in diameter, perhaps, and about a foot long. This cylinder is a tonite bomb-gun. A short piece of metal projects from the flat lower end. This is the trigger. When the harpoon is thrown into the buttery, blubber-wrapped body of the whale, it sinks in until the whale's skin presses the trigger up into the gun and fires it with a tiny sound like the explosion of an old-fashioned shotgun cap. An instant later a tonite bomb explodes with a roar in the whale's vitals.
The Arctic Ocean whaling fleet which sails out of San Francisco and which in the year of my voyage numbered thirty vessels, makes its spring in the Hawaiian Islands. Most of the ships leave San Francisco in December and reach Honolulu in March. The two or three months spent in this voyage are known in whaler as "between seasons." On the way to the islands the ships cruise for sperm whales and sometimes lower for finbacks, sulphur-bottoms, California grays, and even black fish, to practice their green hand crews.
Captain Winchester did not care particularly whether he took any sperm whales or not, though sperm oil is still valuable. The brig was not merely a blubber-hunter. Her hold was filled with oil tanks which it was hoped would be filled before we got back, but the chief purpose of the voyage was the capture of right and bowhead whales—the great whales of the North.
As soon as we left Turtle Bay, a for whales was posted. During the day watches, a boatsteerer and a sailor sat on the topsail yard for two hours at a stretch and scanned the sea for . We stood down the coast of Lower California and in a few days, were in the tide-rip which is always running off St. Lucas, where the waters of the Pacific meet a counter-current from the of California. We rounded Cape St. Lucas and sailed north into the gulf, having a distant view of La Paz, a little town backed by gray mountains. Soon we turned south again, keeping close to the Mexican coast for several days. I never learned how far south we went, but we must have worked pretty well toward the equator, for when we stood out across the Pacific for the Hawaiian Islands, our course was northwesterly.
I saw my first whales one morning while working in the bows with the watch under Mr. Lander's . A school of finbacks was out ahead moving in leisurely fashion toward the brig. There were about twenty of them and the sea was dotted with their fountains. "Blow!" breathed old man Landers with mild interest as though to himself. "Blow!" boomed Captain Winchester in his big voice from the quarter-deck. "Nothin' but finbacks, sir," shouted the boatsteerer from the mast-head. "All right," sang back the captain. "Let 'em blow." It was easy for these old whalers even at this distance to tell they were not sperm whales. Their fountains rose straight into the air. A sperm whale's up from the water diagonally.
The whales were soon all about the ship, seemingly unafraid, still traveling leisurely, their heads rising and falling , and at each rise blowing up a fountain of mist fifteen feet high. The fountains looked like water; some water surely was mixed with them; but I was told that the mist was the breath of the animals made visible by the colder air. The breath came from the blow holes in a sibilant roar that resembled no sound I had ever heard. If one can imagine a giant of snoring in his sleep, one may have an idea of the sound of the mighty exhalation. The great lungs whose gentle breathing could shoot a jet of spray fifteen feet into the air must have had the power of enormous .
Immense coal-black fellows these finbacks were—some at least sixty or seventy feet long. One swam so close to the brig that when he blew, the spray fell all about me, wetting my clothes like dew. The finback is a baleen whale and a cousin of the right whale and the bowhead. Their mouths are edged with close-set of baleen, which, however, is so short that it is worthless for commercial purposes. They are of much slenderer build than the more valuable species of whale. Their quickness and activity make them dangerous when hunted in the boats, but their bodies are encased in blubber so thin that it is as worthless as their bone. Consequently they are not hunted unless a whaling ship is hard up for oil.
We gradually worked into the trade winds that blew from the southeast. These winds stayed with us for several weeks or rather we stayed with the winds; while in them it was rarely necessary to take in or set a sail or a yard. After we had passed through these aerial rivers, flowing through definite, if invisible, banks, we struck the doldrums—areas of calm between wind currents—they might be called whirlpools of stillness. Later in the day light, fitful breezes finally pushed us through them into the region of winds again.
The slow voyage to the Hawaiian islands—on the sperm whale grounds, we cruised under short sail—might have proved if we had not been kept constantly busy and if diverting incidents had not occurred almost every day. Once we sighted three immense turtles sunning themselves on the sea. To the captain they held out of soups and delicate dishes for the cabin table, and with Long John as boatsteerer, a boat was lowered for them. I expected it would be difficult to get within distance. What was my surprise to see the turtles, with heads in the air and aware of their danger, remain upon the surface until the boat was directly upon them. The fact was they could not go under quickly; the big shells kept them afloat. Long John dropped his harpoon crashing through the shell of one of the turtles, it into the boat, and then went on without particular hurry, and captured the other two in the same way. The cabin feasted for several days on the delicate flesh of the turtles; the forecastle got only a smell from the , as was usual.
We ran into a school of on another occasion—hundreds of them rolling and tumbling about the ship, like fat porkers on a frolic. Little Johnny took a position on the forecastle head with a harpoon, the line from which had been made fast to the fore-bitt. As a rose beneath him, he his harpoon straight into its back. The sea pig went under, leaving the water dyed with its blood. It was hauled aboard, squirming and twisting. Little Johnny harpooned two more before the school took fright and disappeared. The porpoises were cleaned and some of their meat, nicely roasted, was sent to the forecastle. It made fine eating, tasting something like beef.
The was an fisherman and constantly kept a baited hook trailing in the brig's wake, the line tied to the taff-rail. He caught a great many bonitos and one day landed a dolphin. We had seen many of these beautiful fish swimming about the ship—long, and looking like an of blue sky. The steward's dolphin was about five feet long. I had often seen in print the statement that dolphins turned all colors of the rainbow in dying and I had as often seen the assertion branded as a figment of imagination. Our dolphin proved the truth of the poetic tradition. As life departed, it changed from blue to green, bronze, , gold, and gray, making death as beautiful as a gorgeous kaleidoscope.
We saw flying fish every day—great "coveys" of them, one may say. They frequently flew several hundred yards, fluttering their webbed side like the wings of a bird, sometimes rising fifteen to twenty feet above the water, and curving and in their flight. More than once they flew directly across the ship and several fell on deck. I was talking with Kaiuli, the Kanaka, one night when we heard a soft little thud on deck. I should have paid no attention but Kaiuli was alert on the instant. "Flying feesh," he cried and rushed off to search the deck. He found the fish and ate it raw, his lips over it with great gusto. The Hawaiian islanders, he told me, raw flying fish a great .
I never saw water so "darkly, deeply, beautifully blue" as in the middle of the Pacific where we had some four miles of water under us. It was as blue as . At night, the sea seemed afire with phosphorescence. White flames leaped about the bows where the brig cut the water before a fresh breeze; the wake was a broad, glowing path. When white caps were running every wave broke in sparks and tongues of flame, and the ocean presented the appearance of a prairie swept by fire. A big shark came swimming about the ship one night and it shone like a living incandescence—a silent, ghost-like shape slowly under the brig and out again.
The idle night watches in the tropics were great times for story telling. The deep-water sailors were especially fond of this way of passing the time. While the green hands were engaging in talk and wishing for the bell to strike to go back to their , these deep-water fellows would be pacing up and down or sitting on deck against the , smoking their pipes and spinning to each other. The stories as a rule were interminable and were full of "Then he says" and "Then the other fellow says." It was a poor story that did not last out a four-hour watch and many of them were regular "continued in our next" , being cut short at the end of one watch to be resumed in the next.
No matter how long-winded or prosy the , the story was always sure of an audience whose attention never flagged for an instant. The boyish delight of these full-grown men in stories amazed me. I had never seen anything like it. Once in a while a tale was told that was worth listening to, but most of them were uninteresting. They bored me.