The boat skimmed over the wave tops in a mad dash that whalers called a Nantucket sleigh ride. A cheer burst from the oarsmen, but they tensed when the boat stopped moving; the whale was on its way back up. Then the huge mammal surfaced in a tremendous explosion of foam and thrashed around like a trout caught on a lure, only to plunge once more to the depths, surfacing again after twenty minutes. The routine was repeated over and over. With each cycle, more line was hauled in and the distance shortened, until only a hundred feet or so separated the whale and boat.

The whale’s great blunt head swung around toward its tormenter. The mate saw the aggressive behavior and knew it was the prelude to an attack. He yelled at the harpooner to move aft.

The two men exchanged places in the rocking boat, tripping over oars, oarsmen, and lines in a scramble that would have been comical if not for the potentially fatal consequences.

The mate grabbed the lance, a long wooden shaft tipped with a sharp-edged, spoon-shaped point, and stood in the bow like a matador ready to dispatch a fighting bull. The mate expected the creature to roll on its side, a maneuver that would allow the whale to use the sharp teeth lining its tubular lower jaw to their best advantage.

The harpooner swung the tiller over. Whale and boat passed each other only yards apart. The whale began its roll, exposing its vulnerable side. The mate plunged the lance into the whale with all his strength. He churned the shaft until the point was six feet into the animal’s flesh, penetrating its heart. He yelled at the crew to reverse direction. Too late. In its death throes, the whale clamped the midsection of the slow-moving boat between its jaws.

The panicked rowers fell over each other trying to escape the sharp teeth. The whale shook the boat like a dog with a bone, then the jaws opened, the mammal pulled away, and the great tail thrashed the water. A geyser of blood-tinged steam issued from the spout.

“Fire in the hole!” an oarsman shouted.

The lance had done its deadly work. The whale thrashed for another minute before it disappeared below the surface, leaving behind a scarlet pool of blood.

The rowers lashed their oars across the gunwales to stabilize the sinking craft and plugged the holes with their shirts. Despite their efforts, the boat was barely afloat by the time the dead whale surfaced and rolled onto its side with a fin in the air.

“Good work, boys!” the mate roared. “Settled his hash. One more fish like this and we’ll be heading for New Bedford to buy candy for our sweethearts.” He pointed to the approaching Princess. “See, boys, the old man’s coming to pick us up and tuck you into bed. Everyone’s all right, I see.”

“Not everyone,” the harpooner called out in a hoarse voice. “Caleb’s gone.”

THE SHIP DROPPED ANCHOR a short distance away and launched the reserve boat. After the rescue crew conducted a fruitless search for Caleb in the bloodstained water, the damaged whaleboat was towed back to the ship.

“Where’s the green hand?” the captain asked as the bedraggled crew climbed back on board the Princess.

The first mate shook his head. “The poor lad went over when the whale struck.”

The captain’s eyes were shadowed in sadness, but death and whaling were no strangers. He turned his attention to the task at hand. He ordered his men to maneuver the whale’s body until it was under a staging on the ship’s starboard side. Using hooks, they rolled the carcass over and hoisted it to a vertical position. They cut the head off, and, before starting to strip off the blubber, used an iron hook to extract the whale’s innards and haul them onto the deck to examine them for ambergris, the valuable perfume base that can form in the stomach of a sick whale.

Something was moving inside the big stomach pouch. A deckhand assumed it was a giant squid, a favorite meal of sperm whales. He used his sharp spade to cut into the pouch, but, instead of tentacles, a human leg flopped out through the opening. He peeled back the stomach walls to reveal a man curled up in a fetal position. The cutter and another deckhand grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled the limp form out onto the deck. An opaque, slimy substance enveloped the man’s head. The first mate came over and washed away the slime with a bucket of water.

“It’s Caleb!” the mate shouted. “It’s the green hand.”

Caleb’s lips moved, but they made no sound.

Dobbs had been supervising the removal of blubber from the whale. He strode over and stared at Caleb for a moment before he ordered the mates to carry the green hand to his cabin. They stretched the youth out on the captain’s bunk, stripped off his slime-coated clothes, and wrapped him in blankets.

“Lord, I’ve never seen anything like it,” the first mate muttered.

The handsome farm boy of eighteen had been transformed into a wizened old man of eighty. His skin was bleached ghostly white. A lacework of wrinkles puckered the skin of his hands and face as if they had been soaked in water for days. His hair was like strands on a cottonweed.

Dobbs laid a hand on Caleb’s arm, expecting him to be as icy cold as the corpse he resembled.

“He’s on fire,” he murmured.

Assuming his role as the ship’s doctor, Dobbs placed wet towels over Caleb’s body to bring down the fever. From a black leather medicine case he produced a vial of patent medicine containing a heavy dose of opium and got a few drops down Caleb’s throat. The youth rambled for a few minutes before slipping into a deep sleep. He slept for more than twenty-four hours. When Caleb’s eyelids finally fluttered open, he saw the captain sitting at his desk writing in the log.

“Where am I?” he mumbled through dry, crusted lips.

“In my bunk,” Dobbs growled. “And I’m getting damned sick of it.”

“Sorry, sir.” Caleb furrowed his brow. “I dreamed I died and went to hell.”

“No such luck, lad. Seems the spermaceti had a taste for farm boys. We pulled you out of his belly.”

Caleb remembered the whale’s round eye, then being tossed into the air, arms and legs spinning like a pinwheel, and the shock of hitting the water. He recalled moving along a dark, yielding passage, gagging for breath in the heavy, moist air. The heat had been almost unbearable. He had quickly passed out.

A horrified look came to his pale, wrinkled face. “The whale et me!”

Tags: Clive Cussler NUMA Files Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net