第41章 A VISIT TO SOME STRANGE PLACES(6)

Our chief had hardly got his gun ready, before we came to almost a dead stop.All, was silent for just a moment; then, with a roar like a cataract, up sprang the huge creature, head out, jaw wide open, coming direct for us.As coolly as if on the quarter-deck, the mate raised his gun, firing the bomb directly down the great livid cavern of a throat fronting him.Down went that mountainous head not six inches from us, but with a perfectly indescribable motion, a tremendous writhe, in fact; up flew the broad tail in air, and a blow which might have sufficed to stave in the side of the ship struck the second mate's boat fairly amidships.It was right before my eyes, not sixty feet away, and the sight will haunt me to my death.The tub oarsman was the poor German baker, about whom I have hitherto said nothing, except to note that he was one of the crew.That awful blow put an end summarily to all his earthly anxieties.As it shore obliquely through the centre of the boat, it drove his poor body right through her timbers--an undistinguishable bundle of what was an instant before a human being.The other members of the crew escaped the blow, and the harpooner managed to cut the line, so that for the present they were safe enough, clinging to the remains of their boat, unless the whale should choose to rush across them.

Happily, his rushing was almost over.The bomb fired by Mr.

Count, with such fatal result to poor Bamberger, must have exploded right in the whale's throat.Whether his previous titanic efforts had completely exhausted him, or whether the bomb had broken his massive backbone, I do not know, of course, but he went into no flurry, dying as peacefully as his course had been furious.For the first time in my life, I had been face to face with a violent death, and I was quite stunned with the awfulness of the experience.Mechanically, as it seemed to me, we obeyed such orders as were given, but every man's thoughts were with the shipmate so suddenly dashed from amongst us.We never saw sign of him again.

While the ship was running down to us, another boat had gone to rescue the clinging crew of the shattered boat, for the whole drama had been witnessed from the ship, although they were not aware of the death of the poor German.When the sad news was told on board, there was a deep silence, all work being carried on so quietly that we seemed like a crew of dumb men.With a sentiment for which I should not have given our grim skipper credit, the stars and stripes were hoisted half-mast, telling the silent sky and moaning sea, sole witnesses besides ourselves, of the sudden departure from among us of our poor shipmate.

We got the whale cut in as usual without any incident worth mentioning, except that the peculiar shape of the jaw made it an object of great curiosity to all of us who were new to the whale-fishing.Such malformations are not very rare.They are generally thought to occur when the animal is young, and its bones soft; but whether done in fighting with one another, or in some more mysterious way, nobody knows.Cases have been known, Ibelieve, where the deformed whale does not appear to have suffered from lack of food in consequence of his disability; but in each of the three instances which have come under my own notice, such was certainly not the case.These whales were what is termed by the whalers "dry-skins;" that is, they were in poor condition, the blubber yielding less than half the usual quantity of oil.The absence of oil makes it very hard to cut up, and there is more work in one whale of this kind than in two whose blubber is rich and soft.Another thing which I have also noticed is, that these whales were much more difficult to tackle than others, for each of them gave us something special to remember them by.But I must not get ahead of my yarn.

The end of the week brought us up to the Aldabra Islands, one of the puzzles of the world.For here, in these tiny pieces of earth, surrounded by thousands of miles of sea, the nearest land a group of islets like unto them, is found the gigantic tortoise, and in only one other place in the wide world, the Galapagos group of islands in the South Pacific.How, or by what strange freak of Dame Nature these curious reptiles, sole survivals of another age, should come to be found in this lonely spot, is a deep mystery, and one not likely to he unfolded now.At any rate, there they are, looking as if some of them might be coeval with Noah, so venerable and storm-beaten do they appear.

We made the island early on a Sunday morning, and, with the usual celerity, worked the vessel into the fine harbour, called, from one of the exploring ships, Euphrates Bay or Harbour.The anchor down, and everything made snug below and aloft, we were actually allowed a run ashore free from restraint.I could hardly believe my ears.We had got so accustomed to our slavery that liberty was become a mere name; we hardly knew what to do with it when we got it.However, we soon got used (in a very limited sense) to being our own masters, and, each following the bent of his inclinations, set out for a ramble.My companion and I had not gone far, when we thought we saw one of the boulders, with which the island was liberally besprinkled, on the move.Running up to examine it with all the eagerness of children let out of school, we found it to be one of the inhabitants, a monstrous tortoise.