During all the bustle of warlike preparation that had been going on, the greenhorns had not suffered from inattention on the part of those appointed to look after them.Happily for them, the wind blew steadily, and the weather, thanks to the balmy influence of the Gulf Stream, was quite mild and genial.The ship was undoubtedly lively, as all good sea-boats are, but her motions were by no means so detestable to a sea-sick man as those of a driving steamer.So, in spite of their treatment, perhaps because of it, some of the poor fellows were beginning to take hold of things "man-fashion," although of course sea, legs they had none, their getting about being indeed a pilgrimage of pain.
Some of them were beginning to try the dreadful "grub" (I cannot libel "food" by using it in such a connection), thereby showing that their interest in life, even such a life as was now before them, was returning.They had all been allotted places in the various boats, intermixed with the seasoned Portuguese in such a way that the officer and harpooner in charge would not be dependant upon them entirely in case of a sudden emergency.
Every endeavour was undoubtedly made to instruct them in their duties, albeit the teachers were all too apt to beat their information in with anything that came to hand, and persuasion found no place in their methods.
The reports I had always heard of the laziness prevailing on board whale-ships were now abundantly falsified.From dawn to dark work went on without cessation.Everything was rubbed and scrubbed and scoured until no speck or soil could be found;indeed, no gentleman's yacht or man-of-war is kept more spotlessly clean than was the CACHALOT.
A regular and severe routine of labour was kept up; and, what was most galling to me, instead of a regular four hours' watch on and off, night and day, all hands were kept on deck the whole day long, doing quite unnecessary tasks, apparently with the object of preventing too much leisure and consequent brooding over their unhappy lot.One result of this continual drive and tear was that all these landsmen became rapidly imbued with the virtues of cleanliness, which was extended to the den in which we lived, or I verily believe sickness would have soon thinned us out.
On the fourth day after leaving port we were all busy as usual except the four men in the "crow's-nests," when a sudden cry of "Porps! porps!" brought everything to a standstill.A large school of porpoises had just joined us, in their usual clownish fashion, rolling and tumbling around the bows as the old barky wallowed along, surrounded by a wide ellipse of snowy foam.All work was instantly suspended, and active preparations made for securing a few of these frolicsome fellows.A "block," or pulley, was hung out at the bowsprit end, a whale-line passed through it and "bent" (fastened) on to a harpoon.Another line with a running "bowline," or slip-noose, was also passed out to the bowsprit end, being held there by one man in readiness.Then one of the harpooners ran out along the backropes, which keep the jib-boom down, taking his stand beneath the bowsprit with the harpoon ready.Presently he raised his iron and followed the track of a rising porpoise with its point until the creature broke water.At the same instant the weapon left his grasp, apparently without any force behind it; but we on deck, holding the line, soon found that our excited hauling lifted a big vibrating body clean out of the smother beneath."'Vast hauling!" shouted the mate, while as the porpoise hung dangling, the harpooner slipped the ready bowline over his body, gently closing its grip round the "small" by the broad tail.Then we hauled on the noose-line, slacking away the harpoon, and in a minute had our prize on deck.He was dragged away at once and the operation repeated.Again and again we hauled them in, until the fore part of the deck was alive with the kicking, writhing sea-pigs, at least twenty of them.I had seen an occasional porpoise caught at sea before, but never more than one at a time.
Here, however, was a wholesale catch.At last one of the harpooned ones plunged so furiously while being hauled up that he literally tore himself off the iron, falling, streaming with blood, back into the sea.
Away went all the school after him, tearing at him with their long well-toothed jaws, some of them leaping high in the air in their eagerness to get their due share of the cannibal feast.
Our fishing was over for that time.Meanwhile one of the harpooners had brought out a number of knives, with which all hands were soon busy skinning the blubber from the bodies.
Porpoises have no skin, that is hide, the blubber or coating of lard which encases them being covered by a black substance as thin as tissue paper.The porpoise hide of the boot maker is really leather, made from the skin of the BELUGA, or "white whale," which is found only in the far north.The cover was removed from the "tryworks" amidships, revealing two gigantic pots set in a frame of brickwork side by side, capable of holding 200 gallons each.Such a cooking apparatus as might have graced a Brobdingnagian kitchen.Beneath the pots was the very simplest of furnaces, hardly as elaborate as the familiar copper-hole sacred to washing day.Square funnels of sheet-iron were loosely fitted to the flues, more as a protection against the oil boiling over into the fire than to carry away the smoke, of which from the peculiar nature of the fuel there was very little, At one side of the try-works was a large wooden vessel, or "hopper," to contain the raw blubber; at the other, a copper cistern or cooler of about 300 gallons capacity, into which the prepared oil was baled to cool off, preliminary to its being poured into the casks.Beneath the furnaces was a space as large as the whole area of the try-works, about a foot deep, which, when the fires were lighted, was filled with water to prevent the deck from burning.
