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- worse. We were going, it seemed, to illustrate the Whistonian theory
concerning the damned and the comets;—hurried from equinoctial heats to
arctic frosts. To be short, with the true fickleness of his tribe, our
skipper had abandoned all thought of the Cachalot. In desperation, he
was bent upon bobbing for the Right whale on the Nor’-West Coast and in
the Bay of Kamschatska.
To the uninitiated in the business of whaling, my feelings at this
juncture may perhaps be hard to understand. But this much let me say:
that Right whaling on the Nor’-West Coast, in chill and dismal fogs,
the sullen inert monsters rafting the sea all round like Hartz forest
logs on the Rhine, and submitting to the harpoon like half-stunned
bullocks to the knife; this horrid and indecent Right whaling, I say,
compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in southern
and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon blank
Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting in Caffraria, where the lively
quarry bounds before you through leafy glades.
Now, this most unforeseen determination on the part of my captain to
measure the arctic circle was nothing more nor less than a tacit
contravention of the agreement between us. That agreement needs not to
be detailed. And having shipped but for a single cruise, I had embarked
aboard his craft as one might put foot in stirrup for a day’s following
of the hounds. And here, Heaven help me, he was going to carry me off
to the Pole! And on such a vile errand too! For there was something
degrading in it. Your true whaleman glories in keeping his harpoon
unspotted by blood of aught but Cachalot. By my halidome, it touched
the knighthood of a tar. Sperm and spermaceti! It was unendurable.
“Captain,” said I, touching my sombrero to him as I stood at the wheel
one day, “It’s very hard to carry me off this way to purgatory. I
shipped to go elsewhere.”
“Yes, and so did I,” was his reply. “But it can’t be helped. Sperm
whales are not to be had. We’ve been out now three years, and something
or other must be got; for the ship is hungry for oil, and her hold a
gulf to look into. But cheer up my boy; once in the Bay of Kamschatka,
and we’ll be all afloat with what we want, though it be none of the
best.”
Worse and worse! The oleaginous prospect extended into an immensity of
Macassar. “Sir,” said I, “I did not ship for it; put me ashore
somewhere, I beseech.” He stared, but no answer vouchsafed; and for a
moment I thought I had roused the domineering spirit of the
sea-captain, to the prejudice of the more kindly nature of the man.
But not so. Taking three turns on the deck, he placed his hand on the
wheel, and said, “Right or wrong, my lad, go with us you must. Putting
you ashore is now out of the question. I make no port till this ship is
full to the combings of her hatchways. However, you may leave her if
you can.” And so saying he entered his cabin, like Julius Caesar into
his tent.
He may have meant little by it, but that last sentence rung in my ear
like a bravado. It savored of the turnkey’s compliments to the prisoner
in Newgate, when he shoots to the bolt on him.
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