The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries | Page 2

378

THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FISHERIES
CHAPTER I
MAROONED BY A WHALE
"There she blows!"
Colin Dare, who was sitting beside the broken whale-gun and who had been promised that he might go in the boat that would be put out from the ship if a whale were sighted, jumped to his feet at the cry from the 'barrel' at the masthead.
"Where?" he shouted eagerly, rushing to the rail and staring as hard as he could at the heaving gray waters of the Behring Sea.
"There she blo-o-ows!" again cried the lookout, in the long echoing call of the old-time whaler, and stretching out his hand, he pointed to a spot in the ocean about three points off the starboard bow. Colin's glance followed the direction, and almost immediately he saw the faint cloud of vapor which showed that a whale had just spouted.
"Do you suppose that's a whalebone whale, Hank?" asked the boy, turning to a lithe Yankee sea-dog with a scraggy gray beard who had been busily working over the mechanism of the whale-gun.
"No sayin'," was the cautious reply, "we're too fur off to be able to tell yet a while. How fur away do you reckon we be?"
"A mile or two, I suppose," Colin said, "but we ought to catch up with the whale pretty soon, oughtn't we?"
"That depends," the gunner answered, "on whether the whale's willin' or not. He ain't goin' to stay, right there."
"But you usually do catch up?"
"If it's a 'right' whale we generally try to, an' havin' steam to help us out makes a pile o' difference. Now, in the ol' days, I've seen a dozen whales to wind'ard an' we couldn't get to 'em at all. By the time we'd beaten 'round to where they'd been sighted, they were gone."
"Well, I hope this is a 'right' whale," Colin said with emphatic earnestness.
"Why this one 'specially?" the old sailor asked.
"I heard Captain Murchison say that if we came up with a whale while the gun was out of order, rather than lose a chance, he would send a boat out in the old-fashioned way."
"An' you want to see how it's done, eh?"
"I got permission to go in the boat!" the boy answered triumphantly, "and I just can't wait."
"It's the skipper's business, I suppose, but I don't hold with takin' any chances you don't have to," was the gruff comment, "an' if you'll take the advice of an old hand at the game you'll keep away."
"But I want to go so much, Hank," came the reply.
"What for?"
"I'm trying to get Father's permission to join the Bureau of Fisheries," explained the boy, "and when Captain Murchison started on this trip, I begged him to let me come. The captain is an old friend of his."
"I'd rather you went in somebody else's boat than mine, then," was the ungracious response.
"Why, Hank!" exclaimed Colin in surprise, "what a thing to say!"
The old sailor nodded sagely.
"The skipper don't know much more about boat-whalin' than you do," he said, "that was all done away before his time. He's willin' to tackle anythin' that comes along, all right, but a whalin' boat is just about the riskiest thing that floats on water."
"How's that, Hank?" asked the boy. "I always thought they were supposed to be so seaworthy."
"They may be seaworthy," was the grim reply, "but I never yet saw a shipwright who'd guarantee to make a boat that'd be whaleworthy."
"But I'm sure I've read somewhere that whales never attacked boats," persisted Colin.
"Mebbe," rejoined the gunner, "but I don't believe that any man what writes about whalin' bein' easy, has ever tried it in a small boat."
"Well," said the boy, "isn't it true that the only time a whale-boat is smashed up is when the monster threshes around in the death-flurry and happens to hit the boat with his tail?"
"Not always."
"You mean a whale does sometimes go for a boat, in spite of what the books say?"
"I never heard that whales cared much about literatoor," the sailor answered with an attempt at rough humor, "an' anyway, most o' them books you've been readin', lad, are written about whalin' off Greenland an' in the Atlantic."
"What difference does that make?" queried Colin. "Isn't a whale the same sort of animal all the world over?"
"There's all kinds of whales," the gunner said, as though pitying the boy for his lack of knowledge, "some big an' some little, some good an' some bad. Now, a 'right' whale, f'r instance, couldn't harm a baby, but the killers are just pure vicious."
"You mean the orcas?" the boy queried. "Only just the other day Captain Murchison was talking about them. He called them the wolves of the sea, and said they were the most daring hunters among all things that swim."
"Sea-tigers, some calls 'em," the other agreed, "an' they're fiercer than any