NUMA 8 - Medusa
NUMA 8 - Medusa
NUMA 8 - Medusa
NUMA 8 - Medusa
PROLOGUE
THE PACIFIC OCEAN, 1848
IN ALL HIS YEARS SAILING THE WORLD’S OCEANS, CAPTAIN Horatio Dobbs had never known the sea to be so barren. The captain paced the quarterdeck of the New Bedford whaling ship Princess, gray eyes darting like twin lighthouse beams to every point of the compass. The Pacific was a disk-shaped blue desert. No spouts feathered the horizon. No grinning porpoises danced off the bow. No flying fish skittered above the wave tops. It was as if life in the sea had ceased to exist.
Dobbs was considered a prince in the New Bedford whaling hierarchy. In the waterfront bars where hard-eyed harpooners gathered, or in the parlors of the rich Quaker shipowners on Johnny Cake Hill, it was said that Dobbs could sniff out a sperm whale at fifty miles. But only the rank smell of a simmering mutiny had filled the captain’s nostrils of late.
Dobbs had come to dread having to record each day of failure in the ship’s logbook. The entry he had penned in his log the night before summed up the troubles he faced. He had written:
March 27, 1848. Fresh breeze, SW. Not a whale in sight. Hard luck hangs over voyage like a stinking fog. No oil in all of Pacific Ocean for poor ship Princess. Trouble brewing in the fo’c’sle.
Dobbs had a clear view of the length of the ship from the elevated quarterdeck, and he would have had to be blind not to see the averted gazes and the furtive glances from his crewmen. The ship’s officers had reported with alarm that the usual grumbling among the forecastle crew had become more frequent and vehement. The captain had instructed his mates to keep pistols ready and never to leave the deck unattended. No hand had yet been lifted in mutiny, but in the dark and dingy forecastle, the cramped living quarters located where the bow narrowed, men were heard to whisper that the ship’s luck might change if the captain were to meet with an accident.
Dobbs was six foot four and had a profile like a cliff. He was confident he could put down a mutiny, but that was the least of his worries. A captain who returned to port without a profitable cargo of oil had committed the unpardonable sin of costing the ship’s owners their investment. No crew worth its salt would ever ship out with him. Reputation, career, and fortune could rise or fall on a single voyage.
The longer a ship spent at sea, the greater the chance of failure. Supplies ran short. Scurvy and disease became more likely. The ship’s physical condition deteriorated and the crew lost its edge. Putting into port for repairs and supplies was risky. Men might jump ship to sign on to a more successful vessel.
The whaling expedition had gone downhill since the crisp autumn day when the gleaming new ship had pulled away from the bustling wharf to a roaring send-off. Dobbs was bewildered by the change in the ship’s fortunes. No ship could have been better prepared for its maiden voyage. The Princess carried an experienced captain, a handpicked crew, and newly forged, razor-sharp harpoons.
The three-hundred-ton Princess was built by one of the most reputable shipyards in New Bedford. Just over a hundred feet long, the ship had a beam of nearly thirty feet that gave her room to store three thousand casks that could hold ninety thousand gallons of oil in her hold. She was built of sturdy live oak that could withstand the toughest seas. Four whaleboats rested in wooden davits that overhung the deck rails. Other mariners scorned the wide-bodied and square-ended New England whaling ships, but the rugged craft could sail for years through nasty conditions that would have had their sleeker counterparts leaking at the seams.
As the Princess left the dock, a spanking breeze had filled the great square sails that hung from the three masts, and the helmsman steered a course east out of the Acushnet River and into the Atlantic Ocean. Pushed by steady winds, the Princess had made a fast ocean crossing to the Azores. After a brief stop in Fayal to load up on fruit that would ward off scurvy, the vessel had pointed its bow toward the southern tip of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope with no mishaps.
But in the weeks that followed, the Princess had zigzagged across the Pacific without seeing a single whale. Dobbs knew that finding whales had more to do with a solid knowledge of weather and migratory patterns than luck, but as he scanned the distant skyline in desperation, he began to wonder if his ship was cursed. He pushed the dangerous thought from his mind, strode over to the ship’s cook, who was cleaning his stove, and said, “Play us a song with your fiddle.”
Hoping to lift morale, the captain had urged the cook to play his fiddle at sunset every day, but the jolly music only seemed to highlight the sour mood aboard ship.
“I usually wait ’til sundown,” the cook said glumly.
“Not today, cook. See if you can fiddle up a whale.”
The cook put his cleaning rag aside and reluctantly unwrapped the cloth protecting his weather-beaten violin. Tucking the fiddle under his jowls, he took up the frayed bow and sawed away without tuning the instrument. He knew from their sullen looks that the crew thought his fiddling scared the whales away, and each time the cook played he feared, with good reason, that someone might toss him overboard. On top of that, he was down to two strings and his repertoire was limited, so he played the same songs the crew had heard a dozen times before.
As the cook sawed away, the captain ordered the first mate to take charge of the quarterdeck. He climbed down the narrow companionway to his cabin, tossed his weathered top hat onto his bunk, and sat down at his desk. He scanned his charts, but he had tried all the usual whaling grounds with nothing to show for his efforts. He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes, and let his chin drop to his chest. He had only dozed off for a few minutes before the wonderful words he hadn’t heard in months penetrated his veil of sleep.
“She blows!” a voice repeated. “Thar she blows.”
The captain’s eyes snapped wide open, and he came out of his chair like a catapulted projectile, grabbed his hat, and vaulted up the ladder to the deck. He squinted against the bright sunlight at the main masthead a hundred feet above the deck. Three mast-heads were manned in two-hour shifts, with the lookouts standing inside iron hoops on small platforms.
“Where away?” the captain shouted to the mainmast lookout.
“Starboard quarter, sir.” The lookout pointed off the bow. “There. She breaches.”
A huge hammer-shaped head rose from the sea a quarter of a mile away and splashed down in an explosion of spray. Sperm whale. Dobbs barked at the helmsman to steer for the breaching whale. Deckhands scrambled into the rigging with the agility of monkeys and unfurled every square inch of canvas.
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 th
irty-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.
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 po
uch. 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.