Onward we sped until we got among the islands, but no slackening of haste, except when the wind lulled, was indulged in. By day or by night we threaded those mazy archipelagoes as if the whole intricate navigation was as familiar to the skipper as the rooms of his cabin. Such ship-handling surely never was seen. Perched upon the fore-yard, the only light visible being the blazing foam spreading widely out on either bow and ahead where the staunch old ship plunged through those phosphorescent waters, the glowing patches cropping up hither and thither all around as the indolent Pacific swell broke irritably over some up-cropping coral patch, and the steely sparkles of the stars in the blue-black sky above, Captain Cushing conned the ship as easily and confidently as a pilot entering New York harbour on midsummer day, his quiet voice sounding down from where he crouched invisible as if we were being celestially directed. There was no feeling of apprehension among us, for our confidence in his genius was perfect, making us sure that whatever of skill in navigation was required he surely possessed it.
Nevertheless, the mystery of our haste across the whole vast breadth of the Pacific fretted every man, even the dullest. It was outside all our previous experience. Perhaps the only thing that made it bearable was the knowledge that not one of the officers was any better informed than we were. Foremast hands are always jealous of the information obtainable in the cuddy, and even though it may not be of the slightest use to them, any scrap they may obtain gives to the lucky eavesdropper a sort of brevet-rank for the time being. Here, however, all that was to be known as to our movements, the reason for them, and the ultimate object of our long passage, with its unprecedented haste, was locked up in one man’s mind, and that man a graven image for secretiveness.
Such was the expeditiousness of our passage that seven weeks after gamming the nameless whaler on the “off-shore” ground, we sighted one of the Volcano group of islands which lie near the Bonins in the great eddy of the Kuro Siwo or Japanese current, and form one of the landmarks of what was once the busiest sperm whaling-ground on the globe. The shape of the island, more like the comb of a cock than anything else, was familiar to many of us, and gave us for the first time for months a clear idea of our position. So we were on the Japan ground. It was a relief to know that much, certainly; but why--why had we, contrary to all whaling precedent, made a passage of several thousand miles in such haste? No answer. But having arrived, our usual whaling tactics were immediately resumed. With a difference. Instead of being kept hard at work during all the hours of daylight scrubbing, polishing, cleaning, until the old oil-barrel of a ship was as spick and span as a man-o’-war, the word was passed that the watch on deck were to keep a look-out for whale--every man of them except him at the wheel. And the watchers in the crows’-nest were provided each with a pair of binoculars--a thing unheard of before. So the ship became a veritable argus. It is safe to say that nothing, not even a frond of seaweed, or a wandering sea-bird, ever passed within range of sight without being seen and noted. After a few days of this most keen outlook came another surprise in the shape of a speech from the old man.