Now, a whale is a natural reservoir of oil, and, whether alive or dead, he always has around him an area of calm induced by the exudations from his skin. Therefore, when we read of ‘whales taking refuge in sheltered bays from the fury of gales,’ we may be held blameless for curling the lip of derision, and wondering what manner of fools they are who perpetrate such twaddle for the deluding of their readers. Also a whale when it is dead does by some mysterious volition point its head, not in the wind’s eye, or directly to the quarter from whence the wind comes, but about eight points, or forty-five degrees, therefrom, and, stranger still, does invariably drift _towards_ the wind, and not, like a ship, away from it. Various explanations have been proffered to account for this really wonderful movement of the whale’s great carcass after death, but none of them, I think, is feasible save this: that the whale’s tail, being a huge limber piece of gristle of exquisite propulsive shape, is so actuated by the wash of the waves past the great body that its motions, like those of an oar turned in a groove at the stern of a boat, are sufficient to keep the body to which it is attached working to windward. Not, be it noted, against a current, which moves the whole mass of water, but against the wind through the water and incidentally against the sea, which is quite a different matter.
Perhaps an apology is necessary for so long a digression, when the fate of Mr. Pease and his brave men is trembling in the balance, but there are so many utterly impossible and unexplainable things to be read in stories now, written to account for the escape of the hero, that I have felt compelled to take up a little more space than usual in which to explain the entire reasonableness and possibility of escape from their dire peril which actuated and hardened Mr. Pease and his crew. A whisper had run from end to end of the boat full of hope, and Rube in the middle had accepted it with heartfelt joy, not for his own sake (for this extraordinary man never thought about himself at all), but for the sake of his shipmates. And then all settled down to wait and watch. High over them, with a most terrific noise, a blaze of unearthly light, and a peculiarly chilling sensation, burst the hurricane. Really, terrible though it was, they were immensely surprised that it was not worse. They did not, could not realise how that great bank of flesh, already floating much higher than ever it did with life in it, was protecting them, not merely from the impact of the sea, but from the swamping effect of the spindrift, the sea face carried airwards by the wind. As this came flying along it met the body of the whale, and shot upwards, just passing over the frail cockleshell riding in the little smooth to leeward. All heaven’s artillery opened out, the roar of the wind, the rumble of the thunder, the hiss of the lightning; but cowering low down in their tiny craft rocking easily in the quiet water under the lee of the whale, those six men lived. And as the hours wore on they forgot to be afraid; nay, they even slept, or hazily speculated upon what they should do when, the storm having passed, they might, and probably would, find themselves alone on that wide, wide sea, foodless and waterless. And so the hours succeeded each other, day insensibly passed into night, leathery tongues vainly roamed round parched mouths seeking moisture and finding none, and still hope lived.