Then Whipple heard Captain Hoxworth’s booming voice break into laughter. “Yes, Reverend … What was the name? Hale. Yes, Reverend Hale, you’re right. Us whalers hang our consciences on Cape Horn when we head west, and then pick ’em up three years later when we come back home. We’d kind of like to have you ready us up for the job of catching ’em as we glide past.”
“Do you glide past Cape Horn?” Abner asked in some confusion.
“Certainly.”
“How long did it take you to double Cape Horn coming out?” Abner continued.
“What was it?” Hoxworth asked one of the men, a scowling, evil-looking rascal with a long scar across his cheek. “Oh, you weren’t with us. We picked that one up in Honolulu when our cooper jumped ship. You, Anderson! How long did it take us to double the Cape coming out?”
“Three days.”
Abner gasped. “You mean you got around Cape Horn in three days?”
“It was like glass,” Captain Hoxworth boomed. “And it’ll be like glass for us when we go home. We run a lucky ship.”
“That’s the truth!” Anderson laughed. “If there’s whales, we get ’em.”
Abner stood perplexed in the sunlight, trying to rationalize the fact that an obscene whaler—for he was convinced that this was a hell ship—could double the Cape in three days whereas it had taken a group of missionaries almost eight weeks, and he concluded to himself, “The mysterious ways of the Lord with His appointed are beyond understanding.”
“We’ll pray aft,” Captain Hoxworth announced, leading his men and the missionaries to an afterdeck that seemed as spacious as a village common compared to the cramped Thetis.
Abner whispered to Whipple, “You lead the singing and the prayers, and I’ll give the sermon I gave on the other whaler,” but just as the crew began singing, “Another six days’ work is done,” the lookout bellowed, “Thar she blows!” and the assembly disintegrated, some rushing for the whaleboats, some for glasses and some up the lower rigging.
Captain Hoxworth’s deep-set eyes glistened as he spotted the blowing whales off beyond the Thetis, and he strode past the missionaries. “Get those boats away swiftly!” he boomed.
“Captain! Captain!” Abner protested. “We’re having hymns!”
“Hymns hell!” Hoxworth shouted. “Them’s whales!” Grabbing a horn, he shouted directions that sent the whaleboats far out to sea and watched with his glass as they closed in upon the mammoth sperm whales that were moving along in a colony of gigantic forms.
At this point John Whipple faced a major decision. He knew, for he was a missionary like Abner, that since this was the Sabbath he was bound not to participate in this desecration of catching whales; but he also knew as a scientist that he might never again have a chance of watching a crew fight a great sperm whale, so after a moment’s indecision he handed Abner his tall hat and said, “I’m going up into the rigging.” Abner protested, but in vain, and during the ensuing seven exciting hours, he stood glumly aft and refused steadfastly to look at the whaling operations.
Brother Whipple from his vantage point in the rigging saw the three whaleboats from the Carthaginian, each with sail aloft, a harpooner, a helmsman and four rowers, sweep down upon the massive whales.
“They’re sparm!” Captain Hoxworth exulted. “Look at ’em!” and he passed Whipple a telescope. In the glass John spied the enormous beasts, wallowing in the sea and spouting a mixture of water and compressed air more than fifteen feet into the air.
“How many whales are there out there?” Whipple asked.
“Thirty?” Hoxworth suggested cautiously.
“How many will you try to take?”
“We’ll be lucky if we get one. Sparm’s smart whales.”
Whipple watched the lead boat try to sneak up on a particularly large monster, but it moved aggravatingly off, so the mate directed his whaleboat onto a substitute, a huge gray-blue sperm that lazed along in the sun. Creeping up to it from the rear and on the right side, the mate maneuvered his prow deftly into the whale’s long flank, and the harpooner, poised with left leg extended securely into the bottom of the boat, right cocked precariously against the gunwales, drew the harpoon back in his left hand and then flashed it with incredible might deep into the whale’s resistant body.
At this first agonizing moment the great beast flipped out of the water, the harpoon lines trailing, and Whipple cried, “It’s bigger than the Thetis!” For the men of the Carthaginian had hooked into a mammoth whale.
“It’ll make eighty barrels!” a seaman cried.
“If we take him,” Hoxworth cautioned. Grabbing the glass from Whipple, he watched the manner in which the whale plunged in its first attempt to shake off its tormentors. “He’s sounded,” the captain reported ominously, waiting to see how the first mad dash of the monster would be handled by the crew.
Whipple could see the rope whirring out of the harpooner’s tub, with a sailor poised ready with an ax to chop it free—thus losing the whale if trouble developed—and it seemed as if the leviathan must be probing the very bottom of the ocean, so much rope went out. The minutes passed, and there was no sign of the whale. The other two boats placed themselves out of the way, yet ready to assist if the whale surfaced near them.
Then, in an unexpected quarter, and not far from the Carthaginian, the whale surfaced. It came roaring up through the waves, twisted, turned, flapped its great flukes, then blew. A tower of red blood spurted high into the air, a monument of bubbling death, and poised there for a moment in the sunlight as if it were a pillar of red marble, falling back at last into the sea to make the waves crimson. Four more times the huge beast spouted its lungs’ burden of blood. Hoxworth, noting the color, shouted, “He’s well struck!”
Now came the most tense moment of the fight, for the anguished whale hesitated, and all knew that if it came out of this pause in the wrong direction it might stove the whaleboats, or crush them in its powerful underslung jaw, or even crash headfirst into the Carthaginian herself, sinking her within minutes, in the way many whalers had been lost. This time the whale ran true, and at a speed of thirty miles an hour, rushed through the open ocean, dragging the whaleboat along behind. Now the sail was furled and the four rowers sat with their oars aloft, while their mates aboard the Carthaginian shouted, “There goes the Nantucket sleigh ride!”
In this way six men in a little rowboat fought an enormous whale to death. The beast dived and paused, spouted blood and dived again. It ran for the open sea, and doubled back, but the harpoon worked deeper into its flank, and the rope remained taut. When the whale moved close to the boat, the oarsmen worked feverishly hauling in rope; but when the beast fled, they played it out again; and in this wild red game of take in and play out, the whale began to sense that it would be the loser.
Now a second whaleboat crept in, and its harpooner launched another cruel shaft of iron deep into the whale’s forward quarter, and the chase was on again, this time with two whaleboats on the sleigh ride. Swiftly, they were hauled through the bloody sea, and swiftly their ropes were brought close in when the whale rested. Back and forth, up and down the leviathan fought, blood choking his lungs and beginning to paralyze his flukes.
“He’s a monster, that one!” Captain Hoxworth said approvingly. “Pray God he doesn’t catch one of the boats.”
The minutes passed and then the quarter hours, and the whale fought on, bleeding profusely and seeking the safer depths; but always he had to surface, a great bull sperm whale in agony, until finally, after a last mighty surge through the red waves, he rolled over and was dead.
“Got him!” Captain Hoxworth shouted, as the third whaleboat moved in to attach its line to the second, and in this manner the three crews slowly began to tow the whale back to their mother ship. The Carthaginian, meanwhile, manipulated its sails so that it could move with equal caution toward the oncoming whale.
Aboard ship there was much activity. Along the starboard side a section of railing was lifted aw
ay, and a small platform was lowered six or eight feet above the surface of the sea. Men brought out razor-sharp blubber knives with twenty-foot handles. Others laboriously lugged huge iron hooks, each weighing almost as much as a man, into position for biting into the blubber and pulling it aboard. Where Abner was to have preached, the cook and his helper piled dry wood for firing the try-pots in which the whale oil would be rendered, while forward the scar-faced cooper supervised the opening of the hatch and the airing of barrels into which that blubber would be stowed that could not be immediately cooked. Just as these preparations were completed, with John Whipple noting each step in the process, and Abner Hale trying not to do so because all was being done on a Sunday, the whale was brought alongside and Whipple cried, “It’s longer than the Thetis,” but Captain Hoxworth, who like all whalers never referred to the length of a whale, growled, “He’ll make eighty, ninety barrels. A monster.”
When the great sperm was lashed to the starboard side of the Carthaginian, and when the frail platform was adjusted, a black Brava sailor, from the Cape Verdes, nimbly leaped onto the whale’s body and with a slashing knife tried to cut at the blubber so as to attach the giant hooks that were being lowered to him. Deft as he was, he could not make the enormous hooks fast, and when the Carthaginian took a sudden shift to windward, the Brava was struck in the chest by one of the swaying hooks and swept off the whale’s flank and into the ocean, whereupon a dozen sleek sharks who had been following the blood stormed down upon him, but the men on the platform slashed and cut at the raiders and drove them off, so that the Brava climbed back on the whale, cursing in Portuguese, and this time, dripping in blood from whale and shark alike, he caught the brutal hooks into the blubber, and the unwinding was ready to begin. But before it could start, the whale’s great head—twenty-six feet long and weighing tons—had to be cut away and fastened to the after end of the ship.
“You, Brava!” Captain Hoxworth shouted. “Tie this hook into the head!” And the sinewy black man leaped nimbly onto the whale’s head, securing the hook, after which his mates with extra sharp knives on long poles sawed away the mammoth head.
When it drifted clear, they directed their knives to the body of the whale, slashing the thick blubbery skin in sloping spirals that started from where the head had been and ran down to the huge trail hanging limp in the sea. As the skilled workmen cut, they frequently paused for sport and slashed their deadly knives deep into some shark that had come to feed upon the carcass, and when the knife was withdrawn the shark would twist slightly, as if a bee had stung him, and continue feeding.
Now the men on the lines leading to heavy hooks began to haul, and slowly the whale rolled over and over upon itself while the blanket of blubber unpeeled in a huge spiral and was hauled aloft. When more than a dozen feet hung over the deck, one iron hook was cut free from the top and hooked into position lower down. Then the other was cut away and fastened beside the first, allowing the end of blubber to fall free upon the deck, where it was cut away, hacked into pieces, and thrust at first into the boiling try-pots, and when they were full, into the temporary barrels. Then the lines were hauled tight once more, and the thick blanket of blubber continued to unwind and swing aboard, as men on the swaying platform cut it free from the body of the slowly revolving whale.
At last the tail was reached, and in the final moments, before the monstrous carcass was set free for the sharks, the Brava leaped back onto it and cut away a dozen steaks of fresh whale meat. “Get some liver, too,” a sailor shouted, but the Brava felt himself slipping toward the sharks, so he grabbed a line and swung himself back aboard the platform. With a final slash of their scimitar-like knives, the workmen cut the whale loose and he drifted away to the waiting sharks.
Next the giant head was cut into three sections and hauled aboard, where near-naked men scooped out of its vast case more than two dozen precious barrels full of spermaceti, which would be converted into candles and cosmetics.
At dusk, when the head sections, now empty of their treasure, had been dumped back into the sea where twelve hours before they had held a tiny brain which had steered the goliath through the waves, Captain Hoxworth shouted, “Through the generosity of the Lord, our prayers have been delayed. Let the try-pots tend themselves. We’ll pray.” And he assembled all hands onto the oily deck, but Abner Hale would not participate in the services, so John Whipple conducted both the prayers and the singing and delivered an inspired sermon on a passage from the 104th Psalm: “O Lord, how manifold are Thy works!… The earth is full of Thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom Thou hast made to play therein.… The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.” In his peroration he preached quietly: “From the turbulent deep God has raised up leviathan. From the wastes of the ocean He has brought us His riches. But from the wastes of the human ocean, constantly He provides us with riches greater still, for the leviathan of man’s spirit is immeasurable and its wealth is counted not in casks or spermaceti. It is counted in love, and decency, and faith. May we who have trapped the great whale trap in our own lives the greater leviathan of understanding.”
Captain Hoxworth was visibly moved by Whipple’s sermon and shouted, “Cook! Break out some good food, and we’ll celebrate!”
“We ought to be getting back to the Thetis,” Abner warned.
“Forget the Thetis!” Hoxworth boomed. “We’ll sleep here tonight.” And he led the missionaries down into his quarters, and they were stunned. The cabin was spacious, with clean green cloth upon the table. The captain’s retiring room was finished in fine mahogany and decorated with numerous examples of carved whale bone, while his sleeping quarters featured a commodious bed, furnished with clean linen and hung on gimbals, so that even though the Carthaginian rolled in a storm, its captain slept in a steady bed. Along the wall was slung a bookcase, filled with works on geography, history, the oceans and poetry. Compared to the mean and meager Thetis, this ship was luxurious.
And the food was good. Captain Hoxworth said, in a low strong voice that carried his magnetism through the cabin, “We fight hard for our whales. We never finish second best, and we eat well. This is a lucky ship, and, Reverend Whipple, at the conclusion of this voyage I’ll own two thirds of her, and at the end of the next, she’ll be mine.”
“These are fine quarters,” Whipple replied.
“I had the mahogany put in at Manila. You see, I’m bringing my wife aboard on the next trip.” He laughed apologetically and explained, “When a captain does that, the crew calls the ship a ‘Hen Frigate.’ Some whalers won’t ship aboard a ‘Hen Frigate.’ Others prefer it. Say the food and the medicine are apt to be better.”
“Do captain’s wives ever get seasick?” Whipple asked.
“A little, at first,” Hoxworth boomed. “But on a bigger ship, like this, they get over it quickly.”
“I’d like to see Amanda and Jerusha as captains’ wives,” Whipple laughed.
“Did you say Jerusha?” the captain asked.
“Yes. Jerusha Hale, Abner’s wife.”
“Excellent!” the big man cried. “It’s Jerusha I’m marrying, too.” And he reached out to grab Abner’s small hand. “Where’s yours from, Reverend Hale?”
“Walpole, New Hampshire,” Abner replied, unhappy at mentioning his wife’s name in a whaling cabin.
“Did you say Walpole?” Hoxworth asked.
“Yes.”
Big Rafer Hoxworth kicked back his chair and grabbed Abner by the coat. “Is Jerusha Bromley aboard that brig out there?” he asked menacingly.
“Yes,” Abner replied steadily.
“God Almighty!” Hoxworth cried, shoving Abner back into his chair. “Anderson! Lower me a boat!” With fury clouding his face he grabbed his cap, jammed it on the back of his head, and stormed aloft. When Abner and John tried to follow he thrust them back into the cabin. “You wait here!” he thundered. “Mister
Wilson!” he bellowed at his mate. “If these men try to leave this cabin, shoot ’em.” And in a moment he was on the sea, driving his men toward the brig Thetis.
When he swung himself aboard, refusing to wait for a ladder, Captain Janders asked, “Where are the missionaries?” but Hoxworth, dark as the night, roared, “To hell with the missionaries. Where’s Jerusha Bromley?” And he stormed down into the smelly cabin, shouting, “Jerusha! Jerusha!” When he found her sitting at the table he swept all the other missionaries together with his giant arms and roared, “Get out of here!” And when they were gone he took Jerusha’s hands and asked, “Is what they tell me true?”
Jerusha, with an extra radiance now that she was both recovered from seasickness and in the first happy flush of pregnancy, drew back from the dynamic man who had wooed her four years ago. Hoxworth, seeing this, slammed his powerful fist onto the table and shouted, “Almighty God, what have you done?”
“I have gotten married,” Jerusha said firmly and without panic.
“To that worm? To that miserable little …”
“To a wonderfully understanding man,” she said, drawing herself against a small section of the wall that separated two stateroom doors.
“That goddamned puny …”
“Rafer, don’t blaspheme.”
“I’ll blaspheme this whole goddamned stinking little ship to hell before I’ll let you …”
“Rafer, you stayed away. You never said you would marry me …”
“Never said?” he roared, leaping over a fallen chair to grab her to him. “I wrote to you from Canton. I wrote to you from Oregon. I wrote from Honolulu. I told you that as soon as I landed in New Bedford we’d be married, and that you’d sail with me on my ship. It’ll be my ship soon, Jerusha, and you’re sailing with me.”
“Rafer, I’m married. To a minister. Your letters never came.”
“You can’t be married!” he stormed. “It’s me you love, and you know it.” He crushed her to him and kissed her many times. “I can’t let you go!”