Fighting the Whales

Fighting the Whales, by R.M.
Ballantyne

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Title: Fighting the Whales
Author: R.M. Ballantyne
Release Date: June 7, 2007 [EBook #21731]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIGHTING
THE WHALES ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

FIGHTING THE WHALES, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.
CHAPTER ONE.
IN TROUBLE, TO BEGIN WITH.

There are few things in this world that have filled me with so much
astonishment as the fact that man can kill a whale! That a fish, more
than sixty feet long, and thirty feet round the body; with the bulk of
three hundred fat oxen rolled into one; with the strength of many
hundreds of horses; able to swim at a rate that would carry it right
round the world in twenty-three days; that can smash a boat to atoms
with one slap of its tail, and stave in the planks of a ship with one blow
of its thick skull;--that such a monster can be caught and killed by man,
is most wonderful to hear of, but I can tell from experience that it is
much more wonderful to see.
There is a wise saying which I have often thought much upon. It is this:
"Knowledge is power." Man is but a feeble creature, and if he had to
depend on his own bodily strength alone, he could make no head
against even the ordinary brutes in this world. But the knowledge
which has been given to him by his Maker has clothed man with great
power, so that he is more than a match for the fiercest beast in the
forest, or the largest fish in the sea. Yet, with all his knowledge, with
all his experience, and all his power, the killing of a great old sperm
whale costs man a long, tough battle, sometimes it even costs him his
life.
It is a long time now since I took to fighting the whales. I have been at
it, man and boy, for nigh forty years, and many a wonderful sight have
I seen; many a desperate battle have I fought in the fisheries of the
North and South Seas.
Sometimes, when I sit in the chimney-corner of a winter evening,
smoking my pipe with my old messmate Tom Lokins, I stare into the
fire, and think of the days gone by, till I forget where I am, and go on
thinking so hard that the flames seem to turn into melting fires, and the
bars of the grate into dead fish, and the smoke into sails and rigging,
and I go to work cutting up the blubber and stirring the oil-pots, or
pulling the bow-oar and driving the harpoon at such a rate that I can't
help giving a shout, which causes Tom to start and cry:--
"Hallo! Bob," (my name is Bob Ledbury, you see). "Hallo! Bob, wot's
the matter?"

To which I reply, "Tom, can it all be true?"
"Can wot be true?" says he, with a stare of surprise--for Tom is getting
into his dotage now.
And then I chuckle and tell him I was only thinking of old times, and so
he falls to smoking again, and I to staring at the fire, and thinking as
hard as ever.
The way in which I was first led to go after the whales was curious.
This is how it happened.
About forty years ago, when I was a boy of nearly fifteen years of age,
I lived with my mother in one of the seaport towns of England. There
was great distress in the town at that time, and many of the hands were
out of work. My employer, a blacksmith, had just died, and for more
than six weeks I had not been able to get employment or to earn a
farthing. This caused me great distress, for my father had died without
leaving a penny in the world, and my mother depended on me entirely.
The money I had saved out of my wages was soon spent, and one
morning when I sat down to breakfast, my mother looked across the
table and said, in a thoughtful voice--
"Robert, dear, this meal has cost us our last halfpenny."
My mother was old and frail, and her voice very gentle; she was the
most trustful, uncomplaining woman I ever knew.
I looked up quickly into her face as she spoke. "All the money gone,
mother?"
"Ay, all. It