Read Ebook: The Young Ice Whalers by Packard Winthrop

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"The boy is all right," he said; "and the ducking isn't going to hurt him any, but I want to warn you that though he is constitutionally sound, he seems lacking a bit in vitality. He is not very resilient; that is to say, things that some boys would throw off as a duck does water are likely to hurt him. Indoor life is bad for him. He's the sort of chap that should be out in the open as much as possible for a few years. Don't let him study too hard. Keep him sailing his boat and playing outdoor games while his constitution hardens."

A day or two afterward Harry came into the library and found his father with an open letter in his hand.

"I'm ready to report for business, father," said the boy, smiling. "How soon do you want me to begin at the office?"

"Are you really anxious to begin?" asked his father.

"Why, yes, father," said Harry. "I know it will be a good deal of a grind, but it will be good for me, and I feel that I am big enough now to help when you need me."

"Did Maisie stand her ducking all right?" asked his father with a smile, suddenly changing the subject.

"Why--yes, sir," faltered Harry. "How did you know about it? I wasn't going to tell anything about that part of it."

"Oh, I saw Mr. Adams yesterday and he was quite full of the story. He spoke very nicely about your share in it, and I am quite proud of you."

"Oh, sir," said Harry, turning very red with pleasure at his father's praise; "it wasn't anything much, and anyway it was Mr. Griggs who pulled us both out. We would not have got out at all if it hadn't been for him."

"Well," said his father, "it was a very fortunate escape, and I'm glad it came out as it did. But I have two things that I wish to talk to you about, and it may be that we shall not need you in the office at all, but can use you to better advantage in another way. First, I want you to read this letter from Captain Nickerson, my old friend from Nantucket."

He handed Harry a letter written in a cramped but bold handwriting. It was as follows:--

WHALING BARK BOWHEAD, HONOLULU, JANUARY 15, 189-.

DEAR FRIEND DESMOND,--It is a year since I wrote you last, and longer than that since I have heard from you, but shall hope to hear from you when we arrive at Frisco, which will be in April unless something comes up to prevent. We have had rather an uneventful cruise so far, and have taken but few whales in the South Seas. We shall land about 1100 barrels of oil, however, as the result of the cruise up to date. We are refitting here as the result of a hurricane which we took about a month ago, in which we lost the fore-topmast and some gear with it. No one was hurt except two Kanakas, one of whom went overboard when the gale first struck us, and the other got a broken arm by a fall from the foreyard during the gale. How he escaped going overboard is a mystery, but it is pretty hard to lose a Kanaka. I watched out for the other one most of the way into Honolulu. Expected nothing but he might swim alongside and board us, but he didn't come. Picked up a couple of white men off the beach here to take their places. Think they may prove good men. They have been on the beach long enough to know what it is to have a good ship under them and regular fare, though not so good as you people at home get, doubtless.

The old ship is in fine trim again, taut and nobby as a race horse over on the Brockton track. Guess I shall not be home in time to take in the county fair this year, though I would like to. We shall fit out again either at Frisco or Seattle, and will probably touch at Seattle anyway on our way north. I am going to cruise through Bering Sea and into the Arctic this summer for bowheads. Oil is cheap now, but bone is higher than ever, and a good shipload of bone and ivory, such as we can probably get if we go north, will be worth while. And this brings me to one object in writing this letter. My boy Joe is with us this cruise, and as fine a young sailor as ever you saw. I wish, however, he had a lad of good family of his own age for company. I do not like to have him have the crew alone for friends. Some of them are good fellows, too, but many of them are, as you no doubt guess, a rough lot. Your son Harry must be about his age now,--eighteen. Why do not you let him come on and meet us at Seattle, and go north for the summer? He would enjoy the cruise thoroughly, and no doubt learn much that is useful to a young lad just growing up. We shall be back by November at the latest, and it would be nothing much but a summer vacation for him. If you think he would like to go, why not send him on? We'll make a man of him, and a sailor man at that. I spoke to Joe about it, and he is wild with delight at the idea. He remembers the visit that you all made to us at Nantucket some years ago, in which he and Harry came to be great friends. It would be good for his health, too. There is no place like the Arctic in summer for putting health and strength into a man. Besides, I could give him a paying berth as supercargo. There is not much to do in this except a little book-keeping, and that is just what a boy who has been to school as much as Harry has would do easily and well. He would have to keep track of the ship's stores, keep account of expenditures, and such things as that. The pay is not large, but it would give him some pocket-money when he got back, and he would not feel that he was dependent, or a guest even.

Write to me at Frisco about the middle of April, and we will plan to have him meet us there or at Seattle before we start out, which will be some time early in May.

With many pleasant memories of old school-days together when Nantucket was really a whaling town, and the schoolmasters did a good deal of whaling,--Lord! what pranks we used to play, we two!--and my regards to Mrs. Desmond, and many to yourself, I am,

Yours very truly,

WILLIAM NICKERSON.

Mr. Desmond watched Harry narrowly as he read this letter. He saw his eyes light up at the prospect, and noted his suppressed excitement. Then the boy handed it back, and steadied himself.

"But you need me in the office, don't you, father?" was all he said.

"Would you like to go?" asked his father.

"Why, yes, very much, sir," answered Harry frankly; "but not enough to go when you need me for other work here at home. If things were as they were a year ago I should tease to be allowed to go, but now I would rather stay at home."

Mr. Desmond looked pleased. "Now," he said, "this is the other matter I wished to speak about. My business conference the other morning was with Mr. Adams and some other wealthy men who are planning to make large investments in the whaling and trading vessels which go north into Bering Sea and the Arctic each year after whalebone and ivory. There is a good demand for whalebone commercially, and there are some industries which cannot well get along without it. At the same time the supply is limited, and the market would easily pay a much higher price for it. I am partly interested in this as a small share-owner in the Bowhead. It was hardly reckoned as an asset in the business difficulty, as the whaling has not paid well of late years, and dividends are few and far between. So I still retain the stock. The plan of these gentlemen is to concentrate all these vessels under one management, obtain control of the world's available supply of whalebone each year, and, by careful business methods and proper handling of the market, make a good paying business of what is now conducted often at a loss. The scheme is already under way, but the arrangements will not be completed until next fall. Meanwhile we are anxious to get a report of the conditions in that country, and the circumstances under which the business of Arctic whaling and trading is carried on. If you take this trip with Captain Nickerson, you will have a chance to see much of these conditions, and be able to make such a report. It is true that you are young and inexperienced in such matters, but your work may be all the better for that. You will have no prejudices or already formed opinions to bias you, and what you lack in experience in that region may be made up by conversation with those who have made previous cruises there. At any rate, Mr. Adams seemed to think it was worth our while to give you such a commission, if you went out there. He seems much interested in you since the upset, and if you go, you will go on a modest salary in his employ, he being the head of the enterprise. That will perhaps be better for us both than work in the office would be. Now what do you say? Will you go?"

Harry looked hard at his father, saw that he, as usual, meant what he said, and was really desirous of having him go, and then his delight and enthusiasm bubbled right over. He danced about his father, wrung his hand, and in general acted more like a crazy boy than the sedate and repressed youth who had been so willing to go into the office. As he rushed off to tell his mother, and plan his arrangements for the trip, Mr. Desmond smiled cheerily.

"Humph!" he said to himself, "I suppose the doctor was right, but there certainly doesn't seem to be much lack of vitality there."

That afternoon he sent and received the following telegrams:--

To NICKERSON, Whaling Bark Bowhead, San Francisco, Cal.

Have decided to let Harry go north with you. Where shall he meet you, and when?

H. N. DESMOND.

To H. N. DESMOND, Franklin St., Boston, Mass.

Will be in Seattle May tenth to fifteenth. Have Harry meet me there. Great news.

NICKERSON.

Mr. Desmond wrote also, and five days later received a letter from Captain Nickerson, which he had evidently written as soon as the telegrams were exchanged, giving further instructions. Arrangements were hurriedly but carefully made, and one day early in May Harry bade good-by to father, mother, and many friends at the station in Boston, and was off. Maisie was there too, with a smile on her face but a tear in her eye as she bade him good-by with a friendly handshake.

"Good-by, Harry," she said. "I hope you won't go plunging overboard after careless young ladies, up there among the Eskimos. It would be just like you, though. Be a good boy, and bring me a polar bear or something when you come back."

"Good-by, Maisie," replied Harry. "I'll bring you the finest aurora borealis there is in all the Arctic."

BOUND FOR THE ARCTIC

The city of Seattle grows to-day by leaps and bounds. The roar of traffic sounds unceasingly in her streets, the city limits press outward in all directions into the unoccupied territory near by, and the present prosperity and future magnitude of the place seem already assured. She sits, the queen of the Sound, at the meeting-point between the great transcontinental railroads and the great trans-Pacific steamship lines. Great steamers, the largest in the world's carrying trade, ply unceasingly between the magnificent waters of Puget Sound and the mysterious ports of the far East, as we have learned to call it,--though from Seattle it is the far West,--and fetch and carry the products of the Orient and those of our own great country. Mighty full-riggers from the seas of half the world lift their towering masts skyward, as they swing at the city's moorings in water that is just offshore, but so deep that the ordinary ship's cable hardly reaches bottom, hence special cables and moorings are provided. To the westward the Olympic Mountains, clad with the finest timber in the world, lift their snowy cloud-capped summits to the sky, and glow rosy in the light of the setting sun; while, between the city and these mountains beautiful, flow land-locked waters which might hold all the navies of all the world without being crowded, and which seem destined to be the centre of the commerce of the coming century, borne over seas that are yet new to the world's traffic.

Thus to-day! yet a decade and less ago the city was far from being as energetic. Seattle then slept in the lethargy of a "boom" that had spent itself, and was but just beginning to feel the stir of new life and a solid and real prosperity. Splendid business blocks were but half tenanted, many of the original boomers were financially ruined, yet the city kept up its courage, and had an unabating faith that position and pluck would win out. Already this faith was beginning to have its reward in works, and the faint glimmerings of future great advancement were in sight. More business began to reach the port, and the often almost deserted docks had now and then a ship. One of these on the day of which I write was the Bowhead, and certainly business bustle was not wanting on and near her. Perhaps the amount of work going on was not so very great, but the bustle more than made up for that, and Ben Stovers, the Bowhead's boatswain, was the guide and director of this bustle, and to blame for the most of its noise.

Stovers had a voice as big as his frame, and that was six feet two in longitude, as he would have said, and it seemed almost that in latitude. Surely, like this terrestrial globe, his greatest circumference was at the equator. Captain Nickerson was wont to say that Stovers was worth his weight in ballast, and that made him the most valuable man on the ship. It was a stock joke on the part of the first mate, when the wind blew half a gale, the crew were aloft reefing topsails, and the good ship plunged to windward with her lee-rail awash, and her deck set on a perilous slant, to politely ask the mighty boatswain to step to the windward rail so that the ship might be on an even keel once more.

It was the voice of this mighty man that was Harry's first greeting as he came down the dock toward the vessel that was to be his home for the long cruise. It rolled up the dock and re?choed from the warehouses, and every time its foghorn tones sounded, a little thrill of energy ran through the busy crew.

"Hi there! Bear a hand with that cask," it yelled, and two or three dusky Kanakas would jump as if stung, and the cask they had been languidly handling would roll up the gang-way as if it concealed a motor.

"Come on now, Johnson, and you, Phipps; this is no South Sea siesta. Stir your mud-hooks and flip that bread aboard. Wow, whoop! you're not on the beach now, you beach-combers; you've got wages coming to you. Step lively there!" Result, great rise and fall in breadstuffs, and boxes of hard bread going over the rail and down the hold in a way that made the Chinese cook below shout strange Oriental gibberish, in alarm lest the boxes be stove and the contents go adrift.

"Lighter ahoy!"--this to the man driving a cart down the dock; "clap on sail now and come alongside. We've got to get away from this dock before night or the city'll own the vessel for dock charges."

This sally brought a grin from the loungers, not a few, who watched the loading, dock charges being always a sore point with the vessels' owners, and brought the pair of bronchos and the load of goods down the crazy planking at a hand-gallop.

Flour in bags, bolts of cotton cloth and many hued calico, shotguns and rifles, ammunition, what the whalers know as "trade goods" of all sorts, for traffic with the Eskimo tribes, were all being hustled aboard the vessel before the impulse of this great voice, which sounded very fierce, and certainly spurred on the motley crew to greater exertions. Yet it had a ring of good humor in it all, and the men obeyed with a grin as if they liked it.

A tall young fellow with bronzed face and black curly hair stood noting the goods that came aboard and checking them off on a block of paper. He looked up as Harry came down the dock, then gave a shout of recognition, and came down the gangplank with hand extended.

"It's Harry Desmond, isn't it?" he said; "awful glad you came. When did you get here? Father is up in the city doing some business. He'll be as glad as I am that you are here. Come right aboard. I'm Joe Nickerson; of course you remember me, don't you? You're a good deal bigger and older, but you haven't changed a bit. I'd know you anywhere. My! but I'm glad you are going up with us."

He glanced somewhat dubiously at the black hand-satchel that Harry was carrying, but said nothing about it as they went up the plank. Not so the boatswain; he took one look at it and rolled heavily forward.

"Ax your pardon, young feller," he said; "but ye'd better not take the hard-luck bag aboard, had you? Don't you want to leave it down here on the dock? We'll see that it's safe till you go ashore again."

Harry was somewhat surprised, and inclined to resent this seemingly needless interference, but Joe spoke up before he could say anything. "Mr. Stovers," he said, "this is my friend Harry Desmond, of whom you've heard me speak. He's going up with us this trip as supercargo."

The big boatswain reached down a hand like a ham, and shook Harry's awkwardly with it.

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