But every link was present for the occasion. The schooner6, in a dead calm, was rolling over the huge, smooth seas, her boom sheets and tackles crashing to the hollow thunder of her great sails, when Simon Nishikanta put a bullet into the body of the little whale calf. By an almost miracle of chance, the shot killed the calf. It was equivalent to killing7 an elephant with a pea-rifle. Not at once did the calf die. It merely immediately ceased its gambols8 and for a while lay quivering on the surface of the ocean. The mother was beside it the moment after it was struck, and to those on board, looking almost directly down upon her, her dismay and alarm were very patent. She would nudge the calf with her huge shoulder, circle around and around it, then range up alongside and repeat her nudgings and shoulderings.
All on the Mary Turner, fore9 and aft, lined the rail and stared down apprehensively10 at the leviathan that was as long as the schooner.
“If she should do to us, sir, what that other one did to the Essex,” Dag Daughtry observed to the Ancient Mariner11.
“It would be no more than we deserve,” was the response. “It was uncalled-for—a wanton, cruel act.”
Michael, aware of the excitement overside but unable to see because of the rail, leaped on top of the cabin and at sight of the monster barked defiantly12. Every eye turned on him in startlement and fear, and Steward13 hushed him with a whispered command.
“This is the last time,” Grimshaw muttered in a low voice, tense with anger, to Nishikanta. “If ever again, on this voyage, you take a shot at a whale, I’ll wring14 your dirty neck for you. Get me. I mean it. I’ll choke your eye-balls out of you.”
The Jew smiled in a sickly way and whined15, “There ain’t nothing going to happen. I don’t believe that Essex ever was sunk by a whale.”
Urged on by its mother, the dying calf made spasmodic efforts to swim that were futile16 and caused it to veer17 and wallow from side to side.
In the course of circling about it, the mother accidentally brushed her shoulder under the port quarter of the Mary Turner, and the Mary Turner listed to starboard as her stern was lifted a yard or more. Nor was this unintentional, gentle impact all. The instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, she flailed18 out with her tail. The blow smote19 the rail just for’ard of the fore-shrouds20, splintering a gap through it as if it were no more than a cigar-box and cracking the covering board.
That was all, and an entire ship’s company stared down in silence and fear at a sea-monster grief-stricken over its dying progeny21.
Several times, in the course of an hour, during which the schooner and the two whales drifted farther and farther apart, the calf strove vainly to swim. Then it set up a great quivering, which culminated22 in a wild wallowing and lashing23 about of its tail.
“It is the death-flurry,” said the Ancient Mariner softly.
“By damn, it’s dead,” was Captain Doane’s comment five minutes later. “Who’d believe it? A rifle bullet! I wish to heaven we could get half an hour’s breeze of wind to get us out of this neighbourhood.”
“A close squeak,” said Grimshaw,
Captain Doane shook his head, as his anxious eyes cast aloft to the empty canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind-ruffles on the water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of all the orderly procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped and mountainous, like so much quicksilver.
“It’s all right,” Grimahaw encouraged. “There she goes now, beating it away from us.”
“Of course it’s all right, always was all right,” Nishikanta bragged25, as he wiped the sweat from his face and neck and looked with the others after the departing whale. “You’re a fine brave lot, you are, losing your goat to a fish.”
“I noticed your face was less yellow than usual,” Grimshaw sneered26. “It must have gone to your heart.”
Captain Doane breathed a great sigh. His relief was too strong to permit him to join in the squabbling.
“You’re yellow,” Grimshaw went on, “yellow clean through.” He nodded his head toward the Ancient Mariner. “Now there’s the real thing as a man. No yellow in him. He never batted an eye, and I reckon he knew more about the danger than you did. If I was to choose being wrecked28 on a desert island with him or you, I’d take him a thousand times first. If—”
But a cry from the sailors interrupted him.
“Merciful God!” Captain Doane breathed aloud.
The great cow whale had turned about, and, on the surface, was charging straight back at them. Such was her speed that a bore was raised by her nose like that which a Dreadnought or an Atlantic liner raises on the sea.
“Hold fast, all!” Captain Doane roared.
Every man braced29 himself for the shock. Henrik Gjertsen, the sailor at the wheel, spread his legs, crouched30 down, and stiffened31 his shoulders and arms to hand-grips on opposite spokes32 of the wheel. Several of the crew fled from the waist to the poop, and others of them sprang into the main-rigging. Daughtry, one hand on the rail, with his free arm clasped the Ancient Mariner around the waist.
All held. The whale struck the Mary Turner just aft of the fore-shroud. A score of things, which no eye could take in simultaneously34, happened. A sailor, in the main rigging, carried away a ratline in both hands, fell head-downward, and was clutched by an ankle and saved head-downward by a comrade, as the schooner cracked and shuddered35, uplifted on the port side, and was flung down on her starboard side till the ocean poured level over her rail. Michael, on the smooth roof of the cabin, slithered down the steep slope to starboard and disappeared, clawing and snarling38, into the runway. The port shrouds of the foremast carried away at the chain-plates, and the fore-topmast leaned over drunkenly to starboard.
“My word,” quoth the Ancient Mariner. “We certainly felt that.”
“Mr. Jackson,” Captain Doane commanded the mate, “will you sound the well.”
The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, which had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the eastward39.
“You see, that’s what you get,” Grimshaw snarled40 at Nishikanta.
Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, “And I’m satisfied. I got all I want. I didn’t think a whale had it in it. I’ll never do it again.”
“Maybe you’ll never have the chance,” the captain retorted. “We’re not done with this one yet. The one that charged the Essex made charge after charge, and I guess whale nature hasn’t changed any in the last few years.”
“Dry as a bone, sir,” Mr. Jackson reported the result of his sounding.
“There she turns,” Daughtry called out.
Half a mile away, the whale circled about sharply and charged back.
“Stand from under for’ard there!” Captain Doane shouted to one of the sailors who had just emerged from the forecastle scuttle41, sea-bag in hand, and over whom the fore-topmast was swaying giddily.
“He’s packed for the get-away,” Daughtry murmured to the Ancient Mariner. “Like a rat leaving a ship.”
“We’re all rats,” was the reply. “I learned just that when I was a rat among the mangy rats of the poor-farm.”
By this time, all men on board had communicated to Michael their contagion42 of excitement and fear. Back on top of the cabin so that he might see, he snarled at the cow whale when the men seized fresh grips against the impending43 shock and when he saw her close at hand and oncoming.
The Mary Turner was struck aft of the mizzen shrouds. As she was hurled44 down to starboard, whither Michael was ignominiously45 flung, the crack of shattered timbers was plainly heard. Henrik Gjertsen, at the wheel, clutching the wheel with all his strength, was spun46 through the air as the wheel was spun by the fling of the rudder. He fetched up against Captain Doane, whose grip had been torn loose from the rail. Both men crumpled47 down on deck with the wind knocked out of them. Nishikanta leaned cursing against the side of the cabin, the nails of both hands torn off at the quick by the breaking of his grip on the rail.
While Daughtry was passing a turn of rope around the Ancient Mariner and the mizzen rigging and giving the turn to him to hold, Captain Doane crawled gasping48 to the rail and dragged himself erect49.
“That fetched her,” he whispered huskily to the mate, hand pressed to his side to control his pain. “Sound the well again, and keep on sounding.”
More of the sailors took advantage of the interval50 to rush for’ard under the toppling fore-topmast, dive into the forecastle, and hastily pack their sea-bags. As Ah Moy emerged from the steerage with his own rotund sea-bag, Daughtry dispatched Kwaque to pack the belongings51 of both of them.
“Dry as a bone, sir,” came the mate’s report.
“Keep on sounding, Mr. Jackson,” the captain ordered, his voice already stronger as he recovered from the shock of his collision with the helmsman. “Keep right on sounding. Here she comes again, and the schooner ain’t built that’d stand such hammering.”
By this time Daughtry had Michael tucked under one arm, his free arm ready to anticipate the next crash by swinging on to the rigging.
In making its circle to come back, the cow lost her bearings sufficiently52 to miss the stern of the Mary Turner by twenty feet. Nevertheless, the bore of her displacement53 lifted the schooner’s stern gently and made her dip her bow to the sea in a stately curtsey.
“If she’d a-hit . . . ” Captain Doane murmured and ceased.
“It’d a-ben good night,” Daughtry concluded for him. “She’s a-knocked our stern clean off of us, sir.”
Again wheeling, this time at no more than two hundred yards, the whale charged back, not completing her semi-circle sufficiently, so that she bore down upon the schooner’s bow from starboard. Her back hit the stem and seemed just barely to scrape the martingale, yet the Mary Turner sat down till the sea washed level with her stern-rail. Nor was this all. Martingale, bob-stays and all parted, as well as all starboard stays to the bowsprit, so that the bowsprit swung out to port at right angles and uplifted to the drag of the remaining topmast stays. The topmast anticked high in the air for a space, then crashed down to deck, permitting the bowsprit to dip into the sea, go clear with the butt55 of it of the forecastle head, and drag alongside.
“Shut up that dog!” Nishikanta ordered Daughtry savagery56. “If you don’t . . . ”
Michael, in Steward’s arms, was snarling and growling58 intimidatingly59, not merely at the cow whale but at all the hostile and menacing universe that had thrown panic into the two-legged gods of his floating world.
“Just for that,” Daughtry snarled back, “I’ll let ’m sing. You made this mess, and if you lift a hand to my dog you’ll miss seeing the end of the mess you started, you dirty pawnbroker60, you.”
“Perfectly61 right, perfectly right,” the Ancient Mariner nodded approbation62. “Do you think, steward, you could get a width of canvas, or a blanket, or something soft and broad with which to replace this rope? It cuts me too sharply in the spot where my three ribs63 are missing.”
Daughtry thrust Michael into the old man’s arm.
“Hold him, sir,” the steward said. “If that pawnbroker makes a move against Killeny Boy, spit in his face, bite him, anything. I’ll be back in a jiffy, sir, before he can hurt you and before the whale can hit us again. And let Killeny Boy make all the noise he wants. One hair of him’s worth more than a world-full of skunks65 of money-lenders.”
Daughtry dashed into the cabin, came back with a pillow and three sheets, and, using the first as a pad and knotting the last together in swift weaver’s knots, he left the Ancient Mariner safe and soft and took Michael back into his own arms.
“She’s making water, sir,” the mate called. “Six inches—no, seven inches, sir.”
There was a rush of sailors across the wreckage66 of the fore-topmast to the forecastle to pack their bags.
“Swing out that starboard boat, Mr. Jackson,” the captain commanded, staring after the foaming67 course of the cow as she surged away for a fresh onslaught. “But don’t lower it. Hold it overside in the falls, or that damned fish’ll smash it. Just swing it out, ready and waiting, let the men get their bags, then stow food and water aboard of her.”
Lashings were cast off the boat and the falls attached, when the men fled to holding-vantage just ere the whale arrived. She struck the Mary Turner squarely amidships on the port beam, so that, from the poop, one saw, as well as heard, her long side bend and spring back like a limber fabric68. The starboard rail buried under the sea as the schooner heeled to the blow, and, as she righted with a violent lurch69, the water swashed across the deck to the knees of the sailors about the boat and spouted70 out of the port scuppers.
“Heave away!” Captain Doane ordered from the poop. “Up with her! Swing her out! Hold your turns! Make fast!”
The boat was outboard, its gunwale resting against the Mary Turner’s rail.
“Ten inches, sir, and making fast,” was the mate’s information, as he gauged71 the sounding-rod.
“I’m going after my tools,” Captain Doane announced, as he started for the cabin. Half into the scuttle, he paused to add with a sneer27 for Nishikanta’s benefit, “And for my one chronometer.”
“A foot and a half, and making,” the mate shouted aft to him.
“We’d better do some packing ourselves,” Grimshaw, following on the captain, said to Nishikanta.
“Steward,” Nishikanta said, “go below and pack my bedding. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Mr. Nishikanta, you can go to hell, sir, and all the rest as well,” was Daughtry’s quiet response, although in the same breath he was saying, respectfully and assuringly, to the Ancient Mariner: “You hold Killeny, sir. I’ll take care of your dunnage. Is there anything special you want to save, sir?”
Jackson joined the four men below, and as the five of them, in haste and trepidation72, packed articles of worth and comfort, the Mary Turner was struck again. Caught below without warning, all were flung fiercely to port and from Simon Nishikanta’s room came wailing73 curses of announcement of the hurt to his ribs against his bunk-rail. But this was drowned by a prodigious74 smashing and crashing on deck.
“Kindling wood—there won’t be anything else left of her,” Captain Doane commented in the ensuing calm, as he crept gingerly up the companionway with his chronometer cuddled on an even keel to his breast.
Placing it in the custody75 of a sailor, he returned below and was helped up with his sea-chest by the steward. In turn, he helped the steward up with the Ancient Mariner’s sea-chest. Next, aided by anxious sailors, he and Daughtry dropped into the lazarette through the cabin floor, and began breaking out and passing up a stream of supplies—cases of salmon76 and beef, of marmalade and biscuit, of butter and preserved milk, and of all sorts of the tinned, desiccated, evaporated, and condensed stuff that of modern times goes down to the sea in ships for the nourishment77 of men.
Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both stared upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky-scraping top-hamper, where, only minutes before, the main- and mizzen-topmasts had been. A second moment they devoted78 to the wreckage of the same on deck—the mizzen-topmast, thrust through the spanker and supported vertically79 by the stout80 canvas, thrashing back and forth81 with each thrash of the sail, the main-topmast squarely across the ruined companionway to the steerage.
While the mother-whale expressing her bereavement82 in terms of violence and destruction, was withdrawing the necessary distance for another charge, all hands of the Mary Turner gathered about the starboard boat swung outboard ready for lowering. A respectable hill of case goods, water-kegs, and personal dunnage was piled on the deck alongside. A glance at this, and at the many men of fore and aft, demonstrated that it was to be a perilously83 overloaded84 boat.
“We want the sailors with us, at any rate—they can row,” said Simon Nishikanta.
“But do we want you?” Grimshaw queried85 gloomily. “You take up too much room, for your size, and you’re a beast anyway.”
“I guess I’ll be wanted,” the pawnbroker observed, as he jerked open his shirt, tearing out the four buttons in his impetuousness and showing a Colt’s .44 automatic, strapped86 in its holster against the bare skin of his side under his left arm, the butt of the weapon most readily accessible to any hasty dip of his right hand. “I guess I’ll be wanted. But just the same we can dispense87 with the
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