Our opening day was an auspicious one.We had not been within the cruising radius more than four hours before the long-silent;cry of "Blo-o-o-w!" resounded from the mainmast head.It was a lone whale, apparently of large size, though spouting almost as feebly as a calf.But that, I was told by the skipper, was nothing to go by down here.He believed right firmly that there were no small whales to be found in these waters at all.He averred that in all his experience he had never seen a cow-cachalot anywhere around Stewart's Island, although, as usual, he did no theorizing as to the reason why.
Eagerly we took to the boats and made for our first fish, Setting alongside of him in less than half an hour from our first glimpse of his bushy breath.As the irons sank into his blubber, he raised himself a little, and exposed a back like a big ship bottom up.Verily, the skipper's words were justified, for we had seen nothing bigger of the whale-kind that voyage.His manner puzzled us not a little.He had not a kick in him.
Complacently, as though only anxious to oblige, he laid quietly while we cleared for action, nor did he show any signs of resentment or pain while he was being lanced with all the vigour we possessed.He just took all our assaults with perfect quietude and exemplary patience, so that we could hardly help regarding him with great suspicion, suspecting some deep scheme of deviltry hidden by this abnormally sheep-like demeanour.But nothing happened.In the same peaceful way he died, without the slightest struggle sufficient to raise even an eddy on the almost smooth sea.
Leaving the mate by the carcass, we returned on board, the skipper hailing us immediately on our arrival to know what was the matter with him.We, of course, did not know, neither did the question trouble us.All we were concerned about was the magnanimous way in which he, so to speak, made us a present of himself, giving us no more trouble to secure his treasure than as if he had been a lifeless thing.We soon had him alongside, finding, upon ranging him by the ship, that he was over seventy feet long, with a breadth of bulk quite in proportion to such a vast length.
Cutting-in commenced at once, for fine weather there was by no means to be wasted, being of rare occurrence and liable at the shortest notice to be succeeded by a howling gale.Our latest acquisition, however, was of such gigantic proportions that the decapitation alone bade fair to take us all night.A nasty cross swell began to get up, too--a combination of north-westerly and south-westerly which, meeting at an angle where the Straits began, raised a curious "jobble," making the vessel behave in a drunken, uncertain manner.Sailors do not mind a ship rolling or pitching, any more than a rider minds the motion of his horse;but when she does both at once, with no approach to regularity in her movements, it makes them feel angry with her.What, then, must our feelings have been under such trying conditions, with that mountain of matter alongside to which so much sheer hard labour had to be done, while the sky was getting greasy and the wind beginning to whine in that doleful key which is the certain prelude to a gale?
Everybody worked like Chinamen on a contract, as if there was no such feeling as fatigue.Little was said, but we all realized that unless this job was got over before what was brooding burst upon us, we should certainly lose some portion of our hard-won whale.Still, our utmost possible was all we could do; and when at daylight the head was hauled alongside for cutting up, the imminent possibility of losing it, though grievous to think of, worried nobody, for all had done their best.The gale had commenced in business-like fashion, but the sea was horrible.It was almost impossible to keep one's footing on the stage.At times the whole mass of the head would be sucked down by the lee roll of the ship, and go right under her keel, the fluke-chain which held it grinding and straining as if it would tear the bows out of her.Then when she rolled back again the head would rebound to the surface right away from the ship, where we could not reach it to cut.Once or twice it bounced up beneath our feet, striking the stage and lifting it with its living load several inches, letting it fall again with a jerk that made us all cling for dear life to our precarious perch.
In spite of these capers, we managed to get the junk off the head.It was a tremendous lift for us; I hardly think we had ever raised such a weight before.The skipper himself estimated it at fifteen tons, which was no small load for the tackles in fine weather, but with the ship tumbling about in her present fashion, it threatened to rip the mainmast out by the roots--not, of course, the dead-weight strain; but when it was nearly aboard, her sudden lee wallow sometimes floated the whole mass, which the next instant, on the return roll, would be torn out of water, with all the force of the ship suddenly rolling the other way.
Every splinter, every rope-yarn of her groaned again under this savage treatment; but so splendid was her construction that she never made a drop of water more than just sufficient to sweeten the limbers.
It was with great and genuine satisfaction that we saw it at last safely lowered on deck and secured.But when we turned our attention to the case, which, still attached to the skull, battered alongside, any chance of saving it was at once seen to be hopeless.Indeed, as the old man said, it was time for us to "up stick" and run for shelter.We had been too fully occupied to notice the gradual increase of the wind; but when we did, there was no gainsaying the fact that it was blowing a very stiff breeze (ANGLICE, a violent gale).Fortunately for us, it was from the westward, fair for the harbour of Port William, on the Stewart's Island side of the Straits, so that we were free from the apprehension of being blown out to sea or on a jagged lee shore.
