CHAPTER VIII.
"THE TALE OF A WHALE."
"Give way, men!" implored Mr. Dacre anxiously, as the sailors bent totheir task vigorously.
There was small need to admonish the men. The affair had literallybecome a race for life between the boat and the surging, battlingwhales. As they came alongside Jack, who was clinging to the totem, hegave an encouraging wave of the hand.
"Gee! I'm glad you've come. This water is pretty cold, I can tellyou."
He was hauled on board with all swiftness.
"Don't forget old 'Frozen Face,'" he begged anxiously as he heard hisuncle give orders to take to the oars again.
"No time to wait for him now, Jack," declared Mr. Dacre; "look there!"
He pointed behind them. Rushing toward the boat with the speed of anexpress locomotive was a mighty head. It parted the water like anoncoming torpedo boat. The boys gave a shout of alarm.
"It's coming straight for us!"
The sailors pulled on their oars till the stout ash wood bent as if ithad been bamboo. Suddenly there came a loud crack. One of the oars hadsnapped. No doubt, as sometimes occurs, there was a flaw in the wood.The man who was pulling it rolled off his seat into the bottom of theboat.
As he did so, there came a second loud cry of affright. The whale wasalmost upon them. On either side of its enormous blunt head was amountainous wall of water. Even if it did not hit them, the mighty"wash" that its onrush made was likely to swamp the little craft,deeply loaded as she was.
The snapping of the oar had cost valuable time. A collision appearedto be inevitable. The second sailor seemed to be paralyzed withfright. He stared stupidly at the great bulk bearing down upon them.
With a sharp exclamation Mr. Dacre seized an oar out of the fellow'shand. In the stern of the boat was a "becket." He thrust the oarthrough this, and with a few powerful strokes moved the boat forward.It was then out of the direct path of the whale, but still in peril ofthe mighty wave the great body of the creature upreared.
It was at this juncture that Tom proved his mettle. He grabbed theother oar from the stupefied sailor's hands and thrusting it overboardon the port side tugged on it with all his might.
"That's right! Good lad! Head her into it!" cried Mr. Dacre,perceiving the object of Tom's maneuver, which was to force the boatbow first against the towering wave sweeping down upon them. It wasthe only thing to do, and Tom's experience had taught him to actquickly.
Hardly had the boat's bow been swung till it was facing the onrushingwave, than, with a roar and smother of foam, a huge black bulk shotby, drenching them with spray. Carried away by excitement, Jack did afoolish thing. Raising his revolver he fired point blank at the hugewet side of the whale.
Instantly, as the bullet struck it, the great creature spouted. Fromits nostrils two jets of water shot up with a roar like that ofescaping steam.
"Duck your heads!" roared out Mr. Chillingworth.
He had hardly time to get out the words before the spouted water camedown with the force of a cloudburst upon the boat. It was half filled,but they had hardly time to notice this before the great wave that thespeeding whale had caused to rise swept under them. The small boat,half full of water and overcrowded, rose sullenly. To the boys itseemed that they were rushed dizzily heavenward and then let down intoan abyss that was fathomless. But a few seconds later a glad cry fromMr. Dacre announced that the danger had passed. The boat had riddenthe wave nobly, and as for the killers and their quarry, all thatcould be seen of them was a fast receding commotion in the water.
"Phew, what a narrow escape!" gasped out Tom. "I thought we weregoners sure that time!"
"Same here," agreed Sandy with deep conviction.
The strained faces of the others showed what they had thought. Mr.Dacre relieved the tension by ordering all hands to get busy and baleout the boat with some baling cans that were under the thwarts. Theywere in the midst of this task when Jack gave a sudden outcry andpointed over the side.
"What's up now, another whale?" cried Sandy, his face showing hisalarm.
"Whale nothing!" scoffed Jack. "Look, it's the 'Good Genius of theFrozen North!'"
"The mascot!" cried Sandy.
"The mascot, sure enough," declared Mr. Dacre. "It undoubtedly helpedto save Jack's life."
"Yes, after carrying me overboard first!" snorted Jack.
Sure enough, alongside the boat old "Frozen Face" was bobbing serenelyabout.
"We've got to take him back to the ship," declared Sandy.
"Yes, since he's inviting himself we can't be so impolite as to leavehim," said Mr. Chillingworth.
Accordingly, a line was made fast to the totem and he was towed backto the ship and once more restored to office as official mascot inthe bow of the _Northerner_. But the ship did not get under way atonce following the adventure of part of her crew. The body of thewounded whale still hung limply to her bow. Sailors with tackles hadto be called into requisition before the vast obstruction could becleared.
By this time, as if by magic, thousands of birds had appeared. Theyfell upon the carcass, paying scant attention to the men at work onit, and fought and tore and devoured flesh and blubber as if they werefamished. The captain said that they were whale birds, such as hauntthe track of ships engaged in whale trade for weeks at a time.
"Gracious, we certainly are having exciting times!" said Tom as theship once more got under way bound for her next port of call, Valdez,to the east of the great Kenai Peninsula.
"I expect you boys will have more exciting times later than any youhave yet experienced," remarked the captain, who happened to bepassing along the deck at the time. "Your adventure with the whalesreminds me of a yarn that a certain old Captain Peleg Maybe used tospin, of the perils of whaling. Like to hear it?"
The boys chorused assent. They knew something of the captain's abilityas a spinner of yarns.
"Well, it appears, according to the way old Captain Peleg used to tellit, that his ship, the _Cachelot_, was becalmed in these seas whileout after whales," began the skipper with somewhat of a twinkle in hiseye. "One day he decided to enliven the monotony of the constantdoldrums by having his small dory lowered and going a-fishing afterhalibut. Well, the boat was lowered away and the skipper pulled off tosome distance from the ship before he cast his lines.
"Now it seems strange, doesn't it, in an ocean five hundred miles wideand a thousand feet deep, that when he cast his light anchoroverboard, the fluke of it should land in the blow-hole of a whale,which isn't much bigger than a man's fist?"
"What's a blow-hole?" demanded Sandy.
"Why, the orifice through which a whale spouts or sounds, as whalemencall it. You had a specimen of spouting when that whale Master Jackshot at gave you a shower bath. But, according to Captain Peleg, thatwas just what happened to him. The fluke of his anchor lodged right inthat whale's nostril.
"As soon as the anchor hit that whale where the apple hit the man whodiscovered the law of gravitation, off he dashed, and naturally theboat being fast to him, off dashed the boat, too. The line was drawnas tight as the 'G' string on a bull fiddle.
"Cap'n Peleg was standing up in the stern just ready to cast a lineover, when 'bang!' the fun started. He almost went overboard, butrecovered himself in time to find that he was being drawn through thewater at 'sixty-'leven' miles an hour or more. He said afterward itwas the fastest he'd ever traveled. The wind hit his face as if he wascoasting down a forty-five grade mountainside in a runawaysix-cylinder auto without brakes or windshield.
"The cap'n said that the wind blew in his face so hard that every timehe tried to get to the bow of the boat to cut the line, he was blownback again. All this time he couldn't think what he was hitched to. Infact he didn't do much thinking at all. It wasn't till the whale hadgone what Peleg said must have been a hundred miles or more, that itturned plum round and headed right back for his ship again.
"They made the trip in as fast time as if he'd been hitched to arunaway cyclone. As they came near
the ship there was the greatestexcitement on board that they'd had since they ran into a herd ofsperms up in Bering Sea.
"'Come aboard, cap!' yelled the mate.
"'Can't, you're only a way station,' yells back the skipper, 'and thisis the Alaskan flyer.'
"Just then, the way Cap'n Peleg told it, up comes the whale to spout.Seems funny it didn't think of doing that before, but the way Pelegtold it, the creature hadn't. Anyhow, just as they were passing theship, up comes the whale and gives an almighty sneeze. That blew theanchor out of its nose and off it goes, while Peleg takes an oar andguides the boat alongside his ship after the most exciting ride heever had. The boat was going so fast when the whale cut loose, that hedidn't need to row her alongside; all he had to do was to steer herlike a launch and then he had to make two circles to reduce speedbefore he dared try to reach his ship.
"Peleg said that when they hoisted the boat on deck they found she hadstood the trip all right, except that paint on her sides was blisteredand burned by reason of the friction kicked up by the terrific pacethey had traveled through the water."
The boys burst into a roar of laughter at the conclusion of thissurprising anecdote. The captain's eyes twinkled.
"Remember, I don't vouch for it," he said; "I'm only telling the taleto you as it was told to me."
"The tale of a whale," chuckled Tom.
"A whale of a tale, I guess you mean," spoke Jack.
"Captain, what did you say the name of that skipper was?" inquiredSandy innocently.
"Maybe," was the answer.
"Aweel," said the Scotch lad soberly, "I'm thinking he was wellnamed."