CHAPTER X
A LONG BLUE WHALE CHASE
“Suddenly a cloud of white vapor shot into our very faces and a great dripping body rounded out under the ship’s bow. The click of the camera was followed by the deafening roar of the gun.”
Captain Fred Olsen had invited me to spend a week with him aboard the Rekkusu Maru, and for five days we had been at sea losing both coal and patience chasing finbacks with but one whale to our credit. The fifth evening, after a hard day’s work with no results, the ship was headed for Kamaishi, a good harbor some seventy miles from Aikawa.
At 9:30 the Rekkusu was in quiet water well within the bay and when we came on deck for a look around we could see by their lights two whale ships riding smoothly at short anchor chains only a little distance away. One was Daito No. 2, Captain Larsen, with whom I had hunted humpback whales off the coast of Vancouver Island two years before when he had the St. Lawrence; the other, the Airondo Maru, Captain Reidar Jacobsen’s ship. Both Olsen and myself were tired so we did not go aboard but turned in at ten o’clock and were soon asleep.
The next morning I was awakened by the alternate starting and stopping of the engines and knew that already a whale had been sighted. It was seven o’clock and dressing hurriedly I ran on deck to find the ship rolling about in a heavy sea and a cold rain falling. I got into a suit of oilskins and then climbed to the bridge. My greeting of “O hayo” (good morning) was answered by the man at the wheel, who said they were hunting a shiro-nagasu (blue whale), which had been found about six o’clock and had almost given a shot. Captain Olsen was at the gun and waved his hand in greeting just as we heard the metallic whistle of the spout on the starboard bow.
I got the camera ready for use, protecting it as much as possible with the flap of my oilskin jacket, but was rather dubious as to how successful the pictures would be. The driving rain covered the lens with a film of water as soon as the coat was lifted, and I knew that trouble could be expected with the shutter when the dampness had penetrated to its curtain. The whale came up two or three times and through the field glasses I could see its diminutive dorsal fin and blue-gray back which, in the rain, appeared to be exactly the color of the water.
“For ten minutes the silence continued, then the Captain said in a quiet voice: ‘There he is, far away on the beam!’”
Twice a shot seemed imminent but each time the animal refused to take the last short dive which would have brought it within range. At 9 o’clock Captain Olsen ran to the cabin for a cup of coffee and to change his wet clothes, for he had neglected to put on oilskins before going on deck. He had only been below ten minutes when the whale appeared not far away and Olsen hurried forward, pulling on his coat as he ran. Again the whale rose, about thirty fathoms from the ship and just out of range.
Olsen called to me:
“Get ready; he’ll come close next time.”
Suddenly a cloud of white vapor shot into our very faces and a great dripping body rounded out under the ship’s bow. The click of the camera was followed by the deafening roar of the gun; then there was a moment’s stillness as the giant figure quivered, straightened out, righted itself, and with a crashing blow of the flukes swung about and dashed away, tearing through the water partly on the surface, partly below it.
The cry of “Banzai!” which rose from the sailors was drowned in the shrieking of the winch and the pounding of the line on the deck as fathom after fathom was dragged over the iron wheels.
Through the cloud of smoke I could see the Engineer putting all his strength upon the brake and heard him shout for water to wet the burning wood. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred fathoms were dragged out when suddenly the rush ceased and the ship lay still, quietly rolling in the swell. The whale had sounded, and the rope hung straight down from the bow as rigid as a bar of steel.
Fifteen minutes we waited and there was no sign from below. Olsen began to get uneasy and to stamp upon the line, hoping to stir the great animal which was sulking on the bottom.
“I don’t want him to die down there,” he said, “for I’m afraid of this line. The starboard rope is all right but this one is weak. If he doesn’t come topsides to blow so I can get in another harpoon, we may break the line in heaving him up. He’s down a long way and the strain will be awful.”
After twenty minutes the rope began slowly to come in, and I went forward with the Captain to the gun platform, waiting for the whale to spout. We saw it at last, but so far away that I thought it was a different animal. The engines had been stopped when the whale was down but now the ship began to move. Faster and faster the vessel tore through the water until Olsen ordered half speed astern.
The harpoon had struck the whale in a bad place, for with the iron embedded between his massive shoulders he could pull with all his strength. For half an hour we were dragged through the water and again he sounded. This time he was down ten minutes and came to the surface with a rush which threw half his eighty feet of body into the air. Then he started off at a terrific pace. The Captain did not dare to check his dash and ordered another line to be spliced on when the men called up from below that the rope was almost gone. Three-quarters of a mile of line was out before the animal finally slowed enough so that the winch could hold. Even then, with the engines at full speed astern, the ship was being dragged ahead at nearly six knots an hour.
“I ran on deck just as the great brute rounded up right beside the bow and the gun flashed out in the darkness.”
Our catch next began a series of short dives, followed by frantic rushes from side to side, which lasted two hours. Each time the animal went down the winch ground in a few fathoms of line, sometimes losing it and more on the next mad plunge, but slowly, surely, recovering it foot by foot.
At eleven o’clock the whale began to weaken. Every time he rose the stay at the surface was a little longer, his rushes became less violent, and the winch swallowed more and more of the coveted line. With the powerful glasses I could see that at times the water about his back was tinged with red, and knew that the working of the hundred-pound harpoon between his shoulders was making an ugly wound and letting gallons of blood flow from his great veins.
Finally only one line besides the leader for the harpoon was out and I had already begun to work the camera whenever the whale rose to blow. The wind had nearly died but had left a tremendous swell, and the little ship was rolling and tossing like a thing possessed. Captain Olsen, against his better judgment, was drawing the whale in for a second shot when the line slacked away as the ship dropped into the hollow of a great swell, then tightened suddenly and parted with a crack like a pistol shot when she rose on the crest.
With an oath Olsen shouted for full speed, and fired as the great body disappeared beneath the surface. It was a long chance but he made it, and we gave a wild yell as the harpoon shot over the water in a wide semi-circle and dropped upon the whale’s back. There was a sudden jerk, a muffled explosion, and the line slacked away again, leaving a great crimson patch staining the surface. The ship plunged forward through it and I saw the bits of torn and mangled flesh which told the story all too plainly—the bomb on the tip of the harpoon, as it exploded, had blown the iron out and the whale was free.
We lay to with the engine stopped to see what would happen next. Little was said; almost the only sound was the retching and groaning of a pump when the ship keeled far over to starboard with the swell. For ten minutes the silence continued, then the Captain said in a quiet voice: “There he is, far away on the beam.”
Instantly the “ting, ting” of the bell in the engine room sounded and a chase began which I shall long remember as showing what a great part persistency plays in whaling. All the rest of the afternoon the little ship hung to the whale’s track, now getting almost close enough to shoot and again losing sight of the spout in the rain and fog. It was disagreeable enough for me on the bridge, where I could be partly protected from the cold rain by a canvas screen, but Captain Olsen never left the gun. At three o’clock a cup of tea was brought him and he drank it hastily, meanwhile cramming a few crackers into his pocket to be nibbled as opportunity offered.
The day wore on but the animal seemed to be stronger instead of weaker and at five o’clock I had given up hope that we would ever get another shot.
I had just started to leave the bridge to go below when the whale spouted about forty fathoms away and it seemed sure that he would rise again within range. The man in the barrel shouted: “There he comes!” and pointed to a spot just beside the port bow. Captain Olsen swung the gun until he was standing almost on the edge of the rope-pan in front. We could see the huge form just under the surface, but it turned down again, leaving a swirling green trail behind it.
“I’d have shot him in the tail if he had only come up,” Captain Olsen shouted, “but we’ll get him yet.”
“The rope attached to the first harpoon floated backward in dangerous proximity to the propeller and it required some careful work to get the animal fast to the bow and the line safely out of the way.”
Shortly afterward the whale blew near us, dead ahead, and as he turned to go down a school of porpoises dashed along beside his back. When he rose a few seconds afterward the porpoises were leaping all about his head, and, bewildered, he did not know which way to turn. We almost reached him but he slid under the water just before the ship came up. For the next few minutes he was lost in the fog and gathering darkness and I shouted to Captain Olsen:
“You’ll never get him. I’m going below.”
“Well, I’ll stand by until it is too dark to shoot,” he answered. “I might get a chance yet.”
Bringing the blue whale to the station. The carcass is almost as long as the ship.
I had hardly reached the cabin and begun pulling off my oilskins when the jerk of the engines told me they must again be close. I ran on deck just as the great brute rounded up right beside the bow and the gun flashed out in the darkness. “Shinda!” yelled the sailors, and through the smoke cloud I could see the whale give a convulsive twist, roll on its side with the fin straight upward, and slowly sink.
Almost at once the winch began to take in the slack and haul the carcass to the surface. When it came alongside the rope attached to the first harpoon floated backward in dangerous proximity to the propeller, and it required some careful work to get the animal fast to the bow and the line safely out of the way.
We had a long tow to the station, for the chase had carried us nearly one hundred and thirty miles away, and not until the next afternoon did the sturdy little vessel sweep into the bay and deliver her whale to the station where in a very few hours its flesh would fill thousands of waiting cans and be sent to the markets throughout the Empire.