Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

As the ship came slowly around, a second lookout shouted down from his perch.

“Another, Captain!” The lookout’s voice was hoarse with excitement. “By God, another.”

Dobbs peered through his spyglass at a shiny gray back mounding from the sea. The spout was low and bushy, angled forward forty-five degrees. He moved the telescope to the right and then to the left. More spouts. A whole pod of whales. He let forth with a deep whooping laugh. He was looking at a potential fortune in oil.

The cook had stopped playing at the first sighting. He stood on the deck dumbfounded, his fiddle hanging limply at his side.

“You did it, cook!” the captain shouted. “You fiddled up enough spermaceti to fill our hold to the decks. Keep on playing, damnit.”

The cook gave the captain a gap-toothed grin and drew his bow across the violin strings, playing a jaunty sea chantey, as the helmsman brought the ship up into the wind. The sails were trimmed. The ship plowed to a stop.

“Clear away the larboard boats!” the captain roared with a gusto that had been pent up during the long whale drought. “Move smartly, men, if you like money.”

Dobbs ordered three boats launched. Each thirty-foot-long whaleboat was under the command of a mate who acted as boat officer and steersman. A skeleton crew stayed on board the Princess to sail the ship, if necessary. The captain held the fourth whaleboat in reserve.

The entire launch took slightly longer than a minute. The slender boats splashed into the sea almost simultaneously. The boat crews clambered down the side of the ship, took their places on the benches, and dug their oars in. As soon as each whaleboat cleared the ship, its crew quickly hoisted a sail to gain another few knots of speed.

Dobbs watched the boats fly like a flight of arrows toward their targets.

“Easy does it, boys,” he murmured. “Give ’er another pull, steady as she goes.”

“How many, Captain?” the cook called out.

“More than enough for you to burn a ten-pound steak for every man on board. You can heave the salt pork over the side,” Dobbs yelled.

The captain’s laughter roared across the deck like a full gale.

CALEB NYE ROWED FOR all he was worth in the lead boat. His palms were raw and bleeding and his shoulders ached. Sweat poured down his forehead, but he didn’t dare lift his hand off his oar to wipe his eyes.

Caleb was eighteen, a wiry, good-natured farm youth from Concord, Massachusetts, on his first sea voyage. His 1/210 share, or “lay,” put him at the bottom of the pay scale. He knew he’d be lucky to break even, but he had signed on anyhow, drawn by the prospect of adventure and the lure of exotic lands.

The eager lad reminded the captain of his own first whaling voyage. Dobbs had told the young farmer that he would do well if he jumped to orders, worked hard, and kept his nose clean. His willingness to bend to every task and to shrug off jibes had gained him the respect of the tough whalemen who treated him as a mascot.

The boat was under the command of the first mate, a scarred veteran of many whaling voyages. Rowers were constantly reminded to stay focused on the mate, but, as the ship’s green hand, Caleb bore the brunt of the officer’s nonstop patter.

“Come be lively, Caleb me boy,” the mate cajoled. “Put your back into it, lad, you’re not pulling a cow’s teat. And keep your eyes on my pretty face-I’ll look out for mermaids.”

The mate, who was the only one allowed to face forward, was watching a big bull whale swimming on a collision course with the boat. Sunlight glinted off the shiny black skin. The mate issued a quiet order to the harpooner.

“Stand and face.”

Two seven-foot-long harpoons rested in bow cradles. Their razor-sharp barbs were made to swivel at right angles to the shank. The deadly feature made it almost impossible for a harpoon to come free once it had been embedded in the whale’s flesh.

The bowman stood and shipped his oar, then grabbed a harpoon from its cradle. He removed the sheath that covered the barb. He unsheathed the second harpoon as well.

Eighteen hundred feet of line ran from each harpoon through a V-shaped groove in the bow to a box where the rope had been coiled with exquisite care. From there the line ran down the length of the boat to the stern, where it was given a turn or two around a short post called a loggerhead, then was run forward to a tub.

The mate swung the tiller and pointed the bow at the whale’s left side, placing the right-handed harpooner in position to make the throw. When the whale was about twenty feet away from the boat, the mate yelled an order at the harpooner.

“Give it to him!”

Bracing his knee against the inside of the boat, the harpooner pitched the spear like a javelin and the barb sunk into the whale’s side several inches behind its eye. Then he snatched up the second harpoon and planted it a foot behind the first.

“Stern away!” the mate shouted.

The oars dug into the water, and the boat shot back several yards.

The whale huffed steam through its blowhole, raised its great flukes high in the air, and brought them down with a thunderous clap, slapping the water where the boat had been seconds before. The whale lifted its tail in the air a second time, buried its head in the sea, and dove. A diving sperm whale can descend to a thousand feet at a speed of twenty-five knots. The line flew out of its tub in a blur. The tubman splashed seawater on the rope to cool it down, but the harpoon line smoked from friction as it rounded the loggerhead despite his best efforts.