THAT NIGHT, as I lay in my hammock, I couldn’t sleep for thinking of Aunt and Uncle and how good they were. And Frannie, who loved me. And how was my mother? Finally, I was almost asleep when Chester announced impatiently that he could not sleep.
“Let’s pretend,” he said.
“In what way?”
“Follow me.”
Without putting on his shoes, he tiptoed to the small staircase called the companionway, and I followed him, sleepily. On deck, Chester made his way to one of the whaleboats, which was not hoisted on its davits, but sat open in braces on the deck. He stepped inside. I hesitated.
“Pretend we’re on the water,” he whispered. “We’re on the chase.”
“I’ve never been on the chase,” I replied.
“I’ll tell you how. I, the harpooner, stand in the bow. You, the mate, in the stern.” Chester waited imperially for me to join his drama. Somewhat reluctantly I climbed into the stern, grasping first the upright brace for the steering oar to support me and then a sort of stubby post. “What’s this?” I asked.
“The loggerhead. The line from the large line tub”—I saw the tub lodged between the near seats of the whaleboat—“goes aft to the loggerhead, circles round, and then goes forward toward the harpoons. They connect by their own cords to the line.”
From nowhere Chester lifted a harpoon. He almost staggered under the weight of it. The implement consists of a very stout wooden holster and an iron. In later years, the irons were developed with a toggle point, but ours were barbed like a simple arrowhead.
“Pretend we’re at sea,” he said, rocking the boat a bit for realism. “The harpoon should rest here,” and he erected a stick, divided at its top into two compartments, perpendicularly into the starboard gunwale. Through one compartment he rested his harpoon, the barb leaning out beyond the prow, like a projection eager to do its duty. “Usually, there’re two,” he said. And he lifted another harpoon to rest in the second compartment of the upright crotch, for so this harpoon stand was named. “The first iron, and the second iron.”
The whaleboat was some sixteen feet long, with struts across the width to reinforce the boat and serve as seats for the six oarsmen, two on each.
“What must I do?” I asked, being a rather ignorant mate.
“You must sing out, ‘Break your backs! Break your backs, my hearties!’ For that’s what the mate says to the crew.”
“Break your backs! Break your wrists, and arms!” I improvised, and, like Chester, made the boat rock in the moonlight. Our pretense did not seem to progress much. Maybe Chester envisioned whales ahead, and we were approaching them. He stood crouched and ready. Abruptly I asked, in a normal tone, “What are these other casks and implements?”
Chester relaxed his posture. “I’ll tell you about it,” he said. And he proceeded to name parts methodically, from bow to stern, in a clear and authoritative manner. He leaned forward and put a finger in a small vertical groove near the chocks; the cut was used for straightening harpoons. Another larger notch, like the half-moon that sailed in the sky above us, cut into the horizontal bracing across the prow, was called the clumsy cleat, and there the harpooner might wedge his thigh as he reared back to heave the iron. Besides the harpoons the whaleboat carried other sharp implements: a boat spade, a boat hook, and lances and knives. “Suppose we were towed away?” Chester asked. “We have our supplies.” Standing on the gunwale, he pointed out the lantern keg, used to carry candles and hardtack, which had its own line to retrieve it, should so precious an item be swept overboard; we also had a water keg and a compass aboard. There was a bucket for bailing.
Chester showed me a hinge that could be let down to receive a single sail, which lay furled with its mast beside the oars. In some ways, the whaleboat was like a miniature of the ship, though of course it had no layering of decks and was entirely open. “Each oar has its name,” he said earnestly. They were named for the men who wielded them, and those men were so named for their position and function in the whaleboat. The large steering oar was easy to remember. “You would wield that,” he said, since I stood in the stern. And next came the oars known as stroke, tub, midship, bow, and boat steerer.
“Here is the waif pole,” he said and waved a small flag about. “If we can’t tow in our whale, we tag him with this”—I noted the dart at the end for entering the whale’s flesh—“and then he’s claimed as ours.” I thought how vast must be the bulk of a whale, and how great in value, for him to be claimed exactly the same way Columbus might have claimed America, with a flag.
Chester stood for a moment, regarding the sixteen feet of boat between us. Finding nothing left to explain, he turned, saying, “Now you say, ‘Give it to him!”’
“Give it to him,” I whispered, my heart not in the game.
Chester did not lift either the first or second iron from the crotch, but instead pretended to heave a harpoon. “Now we must change places,” he said, and he began to walk toward me and I toward him. “The mate steers us in and we beach on his back!”
“Whose?” I whispered as I passed Chester, he taking one direction around the line tub and I the other.
“The whale’s back! You beach us onto his back. Pretend you hold on to their heads, like knobs. The boat is rocking crazy! crazy!”
“Whose?”
“The heads of the crew. Steady yourself, or it will be ‘man overboard’ and no stopping. Here’s a wave!”
I obediently groped the air for invisible heads. When I reached the bow, Chester urged, “Take up the lance, take up the lance,” and so I pretended to do so. Then Chester added, “I shouldn’t have to tell you what to do.” He sighed.
A real member of the crew materialized. “Ye’d best go back below, Master Chester,” he said. To me he spoke not at all, as though I didn’t exist. Silent as moonlight in our bare feet, we padded across the deck and down the companionway.
