At once the engines stopped and the _Viking_ slipped softly on with diminishing speed. When she was within thirty yards of the whale, each separate muscle of Billy's body was tight with excitement--but the whale arched his back and slipped down deep into the water with a contemptuous swing of his broad, strong tail.
"Psh-h!" exclaimed the captain, giving one slippered foot a kick with the other. "Psh!"
They were running over a stretch of frothy, swirling water, where the whale had lain a moment before.
"_Hon-g-k_!" from off the starboard quarter.
The captain signaled the steersman, who shouted "Full speed!" down the wheel-house tube. In a flash they were chug-chugging in haste after another whale--which eluded them at once, with no more fuss than the first had made: no blowing and frantic splashing; just a lifting of the back and a languid swing of the tail. Thus the third, the fourth, the fifth: again and again, through the hours of that quiet morning, they gave chase; but all to no purpose--on the contrary, indeed, with the bad effect of alarming the whole school. The whales made sport of them; the flash of their fins, as they slipped away beyond pursuit, was most aggravating.
Soon the captain's "Psh!" became guttural, and communicated itself to the man in the crow's-nest and the engineer who was off duty; the elusive fin-backs were too much for the patience of them all. But for hours the "old man" leaned on the gun and smoked his pipe, intent on the chase through every moment of that time. He kicked his right foot with his left; his broad back shook with rage; strange ejaculations drifted back with the clouds of tobacco smoke: that was all. Repeated disappointment but heightened the alertness and eagerness of the crew. Every lost whale was dismissed with a "Psh-h!" and quite forgotten in the pursuit of the next one.
Nine hours out from Snook's Arm and six with the school without pointing a gun!
"Agh!" the captain exclaimed, jumping from the gun platform, at last, "the whale captain have the worst business of all men. Agh! but I wish for rough seas. But I wish I had my harpoon in the back of some whale."
All days are not blue. Before the summer was over, Billy Topsail learned there were times when the _Viking_ put out from the shelter of Snook's Arm to a sea that _is_ rough. A gale from the northeast, gray and gusty, whips up the white horses, and frost gives new weight to the water. Wind and fog and high seas and sleet make the chase perilous as well as bitter. She stumbles through the waves and wallows in the trough with a clear-cut duty before her--to catch and kill a whale: the little niceties of dodging breaking waves cannot be indulged in when all manoevering must be directed towards coming up with the quarry from the proper firing-quarter.