Voyage of Ice (4 page)

After one month at sea, we were nearing the equator, and the weather had turned considerable warm even though it was late November. One day during the second dogwatch, from six to eight in the evening, all hands except the helmsman lounged round the windlass in clusters, smoking and yarning. I played backgammon with Dexter.

“You see, Bones, they been fished out,” said Garret Hix, the red-haired farm boy from Illinois. We called him Carrot Sticks. He was a fine fellow.

I moved a piece. “Fished out?”

“Aye,” said an older sailor, tattooed and sun-hardened. He carved off a wedge from a slab of tobacco and pressed it inside his cheek. “Days were when ye couldn't sail a ship without bumping
into a sperm whale. Practically begged ye to take them. Now 'tis like finding a fart in a hurricane. Friend of mine went a year without seeing one. Eyes dried to raisins from a-staring so hard.”

“A year,” I breathed. I knew the
Sea Hawk
's voyage would not end until her hold burst with whale oil. To go a whole year without one barrel …

“That's why we're headed to the Arctic.” Garret lay on his back, picking his teeth with a toothpick.

Dexter looked at me, his expression confused.

“The Arctic?” I asked. “Where's that?”

“Och!” exclaimed an Irishman we called Irish. “Even for a greenie, he's daft as a brush. One brick short of a load, so he is.”

I blushed, though it wasn't the first time I'd been teased about not knowing something. It was the fate of every greenie, I expect.

Garret propped himself up on his elbow, the toothpick dangling from his mouth. He looked at me blank, as if he hadn't realized before how daft I was. “Well, it's up north about as far as you can get without heading south again. It's frozen cold and full of ice.”

“And we're going there?”
Frozen cold? Ice?

Dexter said nothing, bending his head over the game board.

“I thought you knowed,” said Garret.

“But then why are we headed south?” I asked, feeling ignorant but wanting answers.

“Well, you see, Bones, we've got to sail round Cape Horn before we can head north to the Arctic. There's a continent in our way, you know.”

More grins.

“But I don't understand. Why would we even want to go there? To the Arctic, I mean?”

“What difference does it make?” said Garret. “So long's we
get some whales. For every whale we take, it's money in our pockets. No whales, no money.”

“Then there are whales there?” I asked.

The men chuckled, shaking their heads.

Irish grinned. “What did you expect, laddie? Mermaids?”

The older sailor said, “Couple of years ago, some lucky fellow discovered thousands of whales in the Arctic, swimming round happy as ye please. Polar whales, they be called. Great fat things. Friend of mine said one whale makes two hundred barrels of oil.”

“Ah, shut yer gob,” said Irish. “No whale makes that much.”

“Who be ye telling to shut his gob?”

I wasn't much interested in the boxing match that followed. I ignored the wagers, the cries of encouragement, the laughter. I got up and walked to the rail. Below, the water rushed by with a gurgle. To the west, the sky was still light; to the east, black, stars appearing by the hundreds. From the stern of the ship, I heard the tinkling of a piano and a woman's voice singing,
“Now speed ye on, my gallant bark, our hopes are all in thee; Swift bear us to our peaceful home, far o'er the deep blue sea….”

And then Dexter was beside me.

“The Arctic?” I asked, turning to him. “Why didn't you ask all the proper questions when we signed?”

“Well, it's certain
you
didn't. All you cared about was bugs.”

Dexter leaned against the rail, smiled, and shrugged. “Doesn't matter. I mean, how bad can it be?”

“There she blo-o-o-ows!”

The cry pealed through the morning air and shivered down the mast, into every timber and every heart. In the fo'c'sle, men stopped shoveling food into their mouths and stared at each other. For a split second, no one moved or breathed.

“There she blo-o-o-ows!”

Then everyone went right crazy. I spilled my coffee down my dungarees. Dexter's plum duff plopped onto the floor, along with his tin dish. Irish cursed as he stubbed his toe against his sea chest and tumbled headlong into his bunk, ripping his calico curtain. The companionway jammed with men. I don't even remember hustling up the companionway, but suddenly I was on deck, running aft toward the starboard quarter boat, my heart racing as if I were a hound after a rabbit.

“Luff up to the wind!” cried the captain.

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“There she blo-o-o-ows!
A whole school of them, sir!”

“How far away?”

“A half mile, sir!”

“Blood and thunder! Practically ran over them. Hard down the wheel! Haul aback the mainyard! Fetch me some whales, boys!”

To the rattle of blocks, we lowered our boat with the fourth mate and the harponeer, Adam Briggs, aboard. Then, just as we'd practiced many times, Garret, Dexter, Irish, and I slid down the falls and into the boat.

Following orders, we quickly set our sail and began to paddle. The breeze caught us and we sped downwind toward the whales. In the stern of the whaleboat, the fourth mate, Henry Sweet, whispered, “Don't be afeard now, boys. Just remember your duties and think of all that oil. We'll bathe in it tonight, so bend your backs to them paddles. Quiet now, me hearties. Don't gally the whales. They don't know what's a-coming. Sweet Mother of God, our wives and daughters and sisters depend on us….”

We were just south of the equator, and though the morning was young and breezy, sweat streamed from me. Round about I
heard the sounds of heavy breathing. I smelled sweat, damp dungarees, wet wood. The four boats were neck and neck, ours closest to the whales by half a boat length. Dip, dip, dip went the paddles.

Then, up ahead, I heard it. The hollow sound of a sperm whale releasing its air. A giant, moist bellows.
Blood and thunder.
While I now knew that sperm whales really didn't eat people, that Father had spun me a yarn sure to scare me to the devil, still…

I glanced at Dexter. His eyes were as big as twenty-dollar gold coins. It was the moment we'd waited for all these years.

Closer … closer … I saw them now—saw their black backs; slick, great forms beneath the water….

The whaleboat glided silently, the wind barely a whisper in her sail.

I stared into the seething water ahead, my heart banging like a brass drum.
Holy angels in heaven.
Was that an eye? Were those teeth?

“Faster, boys,” whispered Sweet. “Give me all ye've got.”

Then it happened. I accidentally hit the side of the boat with my paddle.
Ka-thunk!
I froze as the sound echoed through the water like a rifle shot. Immediately, the whales sank out of sight, leaving only bubbles and an oily slick behind. My face flushed hotter than Hades.
Blast it all! I've ruined our first hunt!

Sure enough, the first mate stood in his boat and hollered, “They're gallying to windward! The whole lot of them! Take down the mast, stow your blasted paddles, put your oars to the locks, boys, and pull!” Next he let loose with a string of rip-roaring curses, screaming, with my name mixed up in all of it.

I'd never before heard such salty language. From the mates, the harponeers, my shipmates—coming at me from every side. Even Dexter cast me an irritated glance. What had been an easy
sail downwind toward unsuspecting whales was now a hard pull to windward. I said nothing. Instead, I faced the stern, where the fourth mate stood scowling, his black eyebrows scrunched together, and put my body to the oar.

Puffing and pulling, groaning at the oars, we passed the
Sea Hawk.
Even from a distance, I heard the curses Captain Thorndike shouted at me. The shipkeepers—the cooper, the cook, the carpenter, the steward, and the ship's boy—shouted curses. If I hadn't already known I was stupid, a dullard and a dunce and an idiot, good for nothing but fish food, I knew it now. I prayed that Elizabeth Thorndike didn't know my name, didn't know it was me who was the stupid greenie.

Suddenly, I longed for home, for Aunt Agatha, wishing I'd never heard of the
Sea Hawk.

Only a whale can save me now
.

“The signals on the masthead say the school is three miles to windward,” said Sweet. “Oh, jolly day. Pull, boys, pull. Break your backs a-pulling. Bones, ye let it happen again and I'll split your head open and have your brains for supper.”

“Och!” exclaimed Irish. “It'd make for a wee meal. Hardly worth dirtying a fork.”

“Who said I was going to use a fork?”

“Aw, leave him alone,” said Garret, grunting as he talked. “It's his first hunt. Most everyone fouls up their first hunt, I reckon.”

“Did you?” asked Dexter.

“Well, no,” Garret replied, “but that don't mean nothing.”

“Don't you worry none, Bones,” Garret said every now and then between pulls. “Plenty of men have done the same.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

For four hours we pulled, the conversation eventually dwindling to grunts and an occasional whispered oath. My oar was sticky with blood. My hands screamed with every pull. My back
ached. My lungs burned. The sun blazed, and I tasted sweat. I'd never imagined whaling to be such terrible hard work.

By now the other three whaleboats were strewn out to either side of us, perhaps a half mile separating the two farthest boats. For the longest time I heard nothing but the quiet slap of the oars, the tinkle of water, the creak of the oarlocks, the breathing of my shipmates.

I peered into the water. Seemed bottomless, it did, murky and frightening. Just then, a horrible thought occurred to me.
Is this where Father died?

Suddenly, I saw a shadowy shape beneath me. I blinked. My heart lurched.
Could it be … Was it …

The water became darker, black almost, and I knew from the surge in my blood it was a whale rising.
Close, too close!
Before I could cry out, the whale erupted from the water with a blast from his blowhole. A mist stung me, a stench of rot, as the whale's body blotted out the sun, his vast form suspended in the air.

A monster.

Big as a building.

other of mercy!” cried Irish.

The monster's jaw snapped, and I saw the glistening of teeth.

In the same moment, the harponeer stood and cast his iron deep into the whale's hide. “Stern all! Stern for your lives!” Briggs screamed as he grabbed his second iron and darted it into the whale as well.

I rowed for my very life.
God help us! We'll capsize!

With a crack like thunder, the whale crashed into the water. A wave like the tide roared over us. The whaleboat rolled onto her side, and for a desperate moment I clung to the gunwale, choking on seawater. Then the boat righted herself, half filled with water.

“Stern all!” yelled Sweet. “Before he smashes us with his flukes!”

Dexter began to bail, as that was his job. With the others I found my seat and rowed like the dickens. Suddenly, with a shriek, the whaleline flew past my shoulder as the injured whale sped to windward.

“Avast!” cried Sweet. “We're in for a ride! Bail, boys, bail! All of ye!”

I bailed like a crazy man as the line whistled hot and sizzling round the loggerhead in the stern, forward the length of the boat, and out the bow's chocks. Smoke rose from the loggerhead. The air stank of burning hemp. The bow dipped low. Terrible low. I'd heard yarns of how if the line caught in the chocks, it yanked the boat under in an instant, men and all, never to be seen again.
Blood and thunder!
I'd heard tales of men getting caught in the line as it whizzed out of the tubs, a coil wrapped round an arm, an ankle, the poor fellows whipping right out of the whale-boat and down into the deep so fast no one saw them go.
By fire!

Then, with a groan and a shudder, our whaleboat took off, dashing along, the line stretched taut between us and the whale. I clung to my seat, tasting blood, teeth jarring together, as we crashed from one wave to the next, rocking back and forth, blinded by spray.
Jerusalem crickets! Is every chase like this?