Alone
under the grayness of an afternoon sky during late October of 1857, and amidst
swell of the North Atlantic – her bow pointing southwestward towards where,
several miles beyond the horizon, lay the windswept island of the small and
remote whaling station which was as close as she possessed to a home port, the Crimson Wash was riding a sea anchor, as
if uncaring of the favorable wind that would continue to propel her homewards
should the sails of her three masts be forthwith again unfurled.
A schooner with facilities for
processing a cetacean even the size of a Blue Whale, the Crimson Wash was nonetheless only infrequently used for the
horrific and present-day reprehensible scenario of a whale being flensed; and
indeed most of the leviathans who fell prey to the black-and-white timber
whaleship, were towed to the island station to be stripped of their blubber,
which would be rendered into oil for use in lamps of either street or home, or
for the manufacture of soap and other products for the relatively fledgling
consumer market of the mid nineteenth-century.
Indeed a Northern Right Whale and her calf were now forlornly floating
just to the stern of the schooner, in deathly pause amidst being towed to the nearby
island of their intended flensing; but it was the Sperm Whale (the waxy
spermaceti within the head of such a cetacean, being a prized ingredient of the
cosmetic industries of the world) resting amidst the ocean swell some several
hundred yards beyond the bow of the ship, which was currently the focus of the
spyglass attention of the captain of the Crimson
Wash.
A huge bull of a man in his early
fifties (in a relative and physical sense, the equivalent of the cetacean
towards which he was peering through the spyglass), Captain Abel Hawkrigg was
moreover the fearsome patriarch of the treeless island, located some forty
miles off the eastern coast of Newfoundland, whose lone settlement was the
whaling station which the captain himself had founded almost two decades
earlier; and after now lowering the spyglass from an eye, Captain Hawkrigg
looked rightwards to where the first mate was standing alongside him and
forward upon the main deck of the schooner.
A somewhat less fearsome bearded man than Captain Hawkrigg, the first
mate – a weather-gnarled American who had thirty years previously set sail as a
cabin boy on a whaleship from Nantucket – accepted the spyglass which was being
proffered to him; and as he took an initial magnified view of the whale resting
ahead and with its tail facing towards the schooner bowsprit, the first mate
listened to words spoken by the captain, and did so with many years of
familiarity as regards the Newfoundland accent in which they were ominously
delivered.
‘This cachalot would make a
magnificent catch for the end of the season, Mr. Starling; and given that
within a handful of days, most of the crew will be sailing back to the mainland
to winter there in the bosom of their kin, I reckon that you and I could still
be flensing the whale upon Christmas Eve.
Anyhow, do you think that the crew have one more chase left in them for
the year?’
‘Without doubt’.
‘Very well – give the order for the
first and second whaleboats to be manned and lowered into the ocean’.
‘Aye, aye, captain’.
Two suspended from davits on either
the port or the starboard side of the schooner, the Crimson Wash was equipped with a quartet of whaleboats – large
rowing-craft graced with what was in effect a bow at each end, and which
thereby enabled the boats to be easily switched from being rowed in either a
fore or an aft direction; and only a few minutes after Mr. Starling had
acknowledged the latter command of Captain Hawkrigg, the forward whaleboat of
each of the pairs, had been lowered into the swell of the North Atlantic:
half-a-dozen rowers in each of the whaleboats, and the port and starboard craft
of the tiny and ship-separated flotilla, respectively under the command of the
captain and the first mate. Oar blades
were employed to push the whaleboats away from the sides of the mother ship; and
in a silence only broken by the creaking of the rowlocks – and by the lapping
of seawater against the planking of their hulls, the whaleboats were steadily
rowed to where they now halted and made rendezvous under the unseeing and
wooden gaze of the figurehead of the schooner.
As confidently as if upon dry land,
Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling assumed positions of standing - facing
forwards from what were at present the bows of the whaleboats; and then the
captain quietly called out across the several yards of ocean stretching between
the two craft.
‘He’s
resting like a babe in a cradle – I doubt that he’s even aware of our presence;
but of course we must approach him with a stealth that belies such a belief in
good fortune. Let’s advance to just before
the danger of his flukes, Mr. Starling, and there ready our harpoons for the
first strike’.
‘I can
smell his blood on their barbs already’.
Almost sixty foot in length – its
massive-brained head constituting approximately one third of its bodily length,
the whale weighed in excess of fifty tons; and as the whaleboats were
stealthily rowed towards the intended positions for the launch of the attack,
Captain Hawkrigg mentally made a correct calculation that the cetacean was
spouting at a rate of no more than four times per minute, and was thus doing so
in inadvertent announcement of not being about to make a dive which, should the
ocean be hereabouts deep enough, could take the creature to an astonishing
depth of over three miles.
Irrespectively, the understandable fearful tension amongst the men who
were rowing the whaleboats, was now virtually palpable to the captain and the
first mate; and when the whaleboats floated to a halt following orders for the
shipping of the oars, Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling shouldered their
harpoons, like ancient Olympians who were readying themselves for the hurling
of the first projectiles of a javelin contest.
Each harpoon was attached to an
individual rope whose main length at present lay coiled within a wooden tub aboard
one of the whaleboats – the ropes themselves each moreover securely fastened to
an iron hoop protruding internally from a keel; and as Captain Hawkrigg and Mr.
Starling held within their left hands, hatchets which could be immediately used
should a dangerous turn of events call for the ropes to be severed to save the
whaleboats and their crews, the first mate watched as the captain, by
theatrically and individually folding down three fingers of his hand that was
nonetheless grasping a harpoon, counted down to the commencement of the attack.
As cold and as steely as the ceiling
of cloud that was so high above them, the harpoons – inevitably part unraveling
the ropes in their slipstream - were hurled through the air in an ironically
gracefully arc, to land embedded deep within wrinkly-skinned flesh to either
side of the S-shaped blowhole forwards and to the left of the head of the
whale; and as the whale’s next spout proved to be a gush of dark blood which
splashed onto the creature’s back before trickling downwards to become diluted
and then dissolved in the ocean, the suddenly shocked and injured cetacean
surged forwards, moments later to commence hauling the whaleboats in its wake,
and do so to the eliciting of a maniacal shout from Captain Hawkrigg.
‘NANTUCKET
SLEIGH-RIDE!’
Such was whalers’ slang for the
occurrence of a whaleboat being dragged through ocean waves by a harpooned
leviathan; and as the present Nantucket sleigh-ride got underway, the Sperm
Whale seemingly possessed a suicidal eagerness to haul its hunters the entire
distance to the island of the proposed carving of its carcass. Nevertheless – in spite of its lungs being
insufficiently filled with air, and of it already showing considerable signs of
being weakened as a consequence of its grievous injuries - the whale presently
attempted a shallow dive; indeed managing to achieve a full disappearance
beneath the surface of the ocean, and thus to cause Captain Hawkrigg and Mr.
Starling to raise their hatchets, in imminent readiness for cutting the ropes
which were attached to the harpoons.
Such a course of severance, however,
forthwith proved to be unnecessary, as the back of the speared whale almost
immediately reappeared within the autumnal air between the ocean and the sky:
the creature exuding a pitifulness nonetheless incapable of eliciting remorse
amongst the men onboard the whaleboats, and gaspingly spouting more of its
precious lifeblood, with a decreasing frequency which clearly indicated that
the creature’s metabolism was rapidly and dangerously slowing. The near-deafening and terrified clicking of
the huge whale, which – save for a brief respite during the failed dive – had
filled the air since the time when the harpoons had struck their target, was
fading in relation to the breathing of the leviathan; and then the toothed
whale gave up the struggle to escape in defiance of its injuries, and so
commenced to silently float amongst the indifferent and bitterly cold swell of
the North Atlantic.
Regardless of its sudden deathly
demeanor, the harpooned whale was in fact floating in a comatose condition,
rendered at least temporarily helpless by injuries which nature was nonetheless
capable of eventually healing; but so convincing of death, was the appearance
of the unconscious leviathan, that as the whaleboats drifted to a standstill
close to the apparently lifeless tail, Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling (with
an erroneousness which was remarkable when weighed against the experience of
their lifetimes as whalers) assumed that their quarry had expired, and did so
after a Nantucket sleigh-ride leading to no more than half-a-mile from where
the Crimson Wash was anchored to the
northeast. Moreover, the other whalers
present were so similarly convinced of the seeming slaughter, that none were
alarmed when the following words of Captain Hawkrigg, carried across the swell
of the apparent death scene.
‘Whenever
you’re ready, Mr. Starling, use your fluke spade to gouge a pair of holes into
the tail of our prize, to ready him for towing to where we shall tether him to
the stern of the ship’.
‘Aye,
aye, captain’.
Even the savage action of the first
mate responding to the latter order which had been given by Captain Hawkrigg,
proved insufficient to raise the comatose Sperm Whale back to consciousness;
and so a rope from each of the whaleboats, was now securely fastened upon
itself, after being individually threaded through one of the holes that Mr.
Starling had gouged out of the tail of the floating leviathan. Alike the harpoon ropes, the extra lines were
attached to iron rings one each protruding upwards from a whaleboat keel; and
forthwith – under a further order from Captain Hawkrigg, the oarsmen of the
double-bowed whaleboats shuffled round upon primitive seats of planking, and
then commenced (to the opening chorus of a whalers’ shanty) the strenuous act
of powering the apparent funeral cortege of the cetacean, towards the anchored
whaleship silhouetted against the grayness of the seascape horizon to the
northeast.
Approximately a quarter-of-an-hour
after the whaleboat-led procession had got underway, it was drawing – at a
distance of fifty or so yards - alongside the port lee of the Crimson Wash; and in fact was doing so
under cheer-accompanied gazes from the more than a dozen crewmembers who had
remained onboard the sea-anchored vessel.
However, as the bows of the whaleboats began to protrude beyond the
stern of the mother ship - and with a suddenness in keeping with the gargantuan
size of the two creatures involved, an albino Sperm Whale with a same-species
mature bull at its right-fluke side, broke through the ocean swell immediately
after swimming to port underneath the keel of the whaleship: the terrifying
emergence not even slowing the ongoing rapid movement of the two whales, who
were now leaving the Crimson Wash
pitching sideways like a bathtub boat in their formidable wake; the crewmember
cheers and the singing of the oarsmen, mutated into a chorus of terrified
screams and yells; and a glimpse of the almost ninety-foot and barnacle-encrusted
white leviathan, eliciting a shout of recognition from Mr. Starling.
‘ICEBERG JACK!’
An
extremely dangerous creature of almost legendary status amongst whalers who
sailed the Baffin Bay waters stretching between their namesake island and the
western coastline of Greenland – waters in which, as a cabin boy, Mr. Starling
had first set eyes upon the fearsome leviathan in question, Iceberg Jack was
known to swim in the company of two Sperm Whale lieutenants whose
uncharacteristic ferocity was almost the equal to his own; and it was in fact
in a bid to rescue one of those lieutenants, that the great white whale was now
surging forwards with head partially lifted out of the ocean (regardless of
whatever reason had driven him far south of his territorial waters), jaws wide
open to sweep up the four ropes which were connecting the whaleboats to their
unconscious victim, and to do so into the awesomely toothed domain that
constituted the long and narrow mouth of Iceberg Jack himself.
As Captain Hawkrigg redundantly
hurled his hatchet towards the white monster - just before, alike Mr. Starling,
losing balance and tumbling backwards onto planking between bulwarks, the two
whaleboats commenced to be towed, almost side-by-side, in the wash just to the
left of Iceberg Jack, moreover whilst the albino leviathan effortlessly chewed
the quartet of ropes asunder; and then the whaleboats were spinning free of
their fleeting towage by the pink-eyed cetacean: the boat under the command of
the first mate, capsizing to the consequence of pitching Mr. Starling and his
oarsmen into the bitter coldness of North Atlantic swell thousands of fathoms
above the ocean floor.
Indifferent to the fate of the men
who were floundering in the water, and of their fellows in the still-upright
whaleboat, Iceberg Jack and his accompanying lieutenant veered sharply round
towards the north, in readiness for propelling (with a remarkable tenderness
that would nonetheless go unnoticed by the whaleboat crews, and indeed by
everyone onboard the Crimson Wash)
the harpooned and comatose leviathan well clear of the ship, and of the two
satellite vessels variously afloat upon the high-latitudes ocean; and indeed –
as under orders from the second mate, a whaleboat was lowered from the Crimson Wash to speed to the aid of the
capsized men, the harpooned whale was already beginning to awaken (in part
thanks to the tender ministrations of its rescuers) from its comatose state of
apparent death.
In spite of the fact that the
speared leviathan was being propelled away by Iceberg Jack and the third
cetacean, many human eyes were nervously and intently keeping the whales under
surveillance, for any indication that they might return to the scene of the
overturned boat; but it was with an urgency inevitably only in part reflecting
the possibility of the whales thus returning, that the operation to rescue the
men floundering in the ocean, was very soon fully underway. The whaleboat under the command of Captain
Hawkrigg, was moving to the aid of a man who were being carried away by the
swell; and the craft which had just been lowered from the Crimson Wash, was already drawn up close to the capsized boat -
which itself was in the process of being returned to a state of floating
upright (with unintentional assistance from the ocean), by several of the
oarsmen who had recently been the occupants of the now troubled vessel.
Two
of their fellows, however – who had been dragged underwater by the left-side
wash of Iceberg Jack, were floating face-downwards and dead; and after the
bodies had been recovered by Captain Hawkrigg and his half-dozen oarsmen, the
trio of whaleboats were sombrely rowed into position alongside the mother ship,
in readiness for being winched skywards by a set of davits upon either the port
or the starboard side of the schooner, and for thus becoming again loftily
suspended just to the seaward side of a bulwark.
Presently - spare sailcloth being
employed as makeshift shrouds, the drowned men were wrapped for transportation
to the whaling station island where they were to be buried the very next day;
and as soon as the corpses had been laid to temporary rest in the hold of the
ship, Captain Hawkrigg and Mr. Starling made their way to stand in the stern of
the main deck, there to gaze (Captain Hawkrigg by means of the spyglass)
northwards to where at approximately half-a-mile distant, Iceberg Jack and the
two leviathans with him, were swimming at a pace slowed to accommodate the
harpooned whale, and were doing so upon an apparent course of eventually disappearing
into an otherwise empty oceanic horizon.
‘If
winter were not to be soon upon us, Mr. Starling – and the Crimson Wash were carrying sufficient provisions, I would this very
moment set sail to hunt the white monster and his companions to the furthest edge
of the Arctic ice, should doing so prove a prerequisite to slaughtering them in
payment for the deaths our two Christian brothers of the harpoon’.
Captain Hawkrigg lowered the
spyglass, and then looked towards the first mate, who – in spite of his phenomenal
hardiness born out of being a whaler for his entire adult life – was now draped
in a blanket, and shivering as a result of still being soaked through his
recent immersion in the North Atlantic.
Nonetheless, Captain Hawkrigg continued to speak.
‘But
we must let the winter months chill our revenge into a dish which – God
willing, come the spring of next year - we shall serve as fiercely cold to
Iceberg Jack as be his very name’.
‘Some ten years ago, captain, the
whaleship Moon Runner sailed into the
waters of Baffin Bay, intent on hunting down Iceberg Jack, and was never seen
again – although Inuit whalers tell of one of their canoeist brethren, having
witnessed the ship being sunk by the great white whale; and as you also may be
aware, there are numerous tales of Iceberg Jack launching attacks upon ships
other than the Moon Runner, as well
as upon their whaleboats’.
‘If
your words, Mr. Starling, are intended to dissuade me from me setting sail next
spring to hunt down the white leviathan and his foul companions, those words
fall upon ears which are deaf.
‘As
for now, give the order for the Crimson
Wash to get underway: the wind is still in our favour to continue our
voyage home, and so we should see the lamplight of our island dwellings by the
hour that night shall fall upon this mournful day’.
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