At the Midway (21 page)

Only when they heard the screams were they reminded….

The whaleboats!

The two crowded boats had maintained a prudent distance between themselves and the
Lydia
Bailey
after observing the first mate's ineffectual harpoon shot.  They were too far away to witness the fates of Chandry and the First.  As far as they knew, the captain was busy planning another attack.

The creature came up under the first starboard boat like a hell-besotted demon.  The boat tipped over and the creature scooped the men into its jaws as if they were scum on a pond.  In the second boat the men listened to the horrible cries of their mates... and wondered at their own fate. There was no way they could outrace the swift monster if it turned on them, too, so they prepared for combat.

Silence came over the swells around the wreck of the first boat.  The monster turned casually, confidently towards the second, its neck stretched high over the ocean.  The men on the
Lydia
Bailey
watched breathlessly as the fight began.

In addition to harpoons and harpoon bombs, each boat was equipped with a rifle and a dozen or so grenades, used in finishing off wounded whales.  All the rifle ammunition was used when the bowman fired shot after futile shot into the beast as it attacked the first boat.  Handing out grenades all around, the officer of the boat had the men count off two volleys.  Then he waited until the creature was but a dozen yards away.

On command, half the bombs were thrown.

Two of them turned out to be squibs.  The other four went off around the creature's neck.

Stopping it cold.

It paddled slowly in place, looking to the left and the right, as if wondering where the explosions had come from.  This was a sitting target the whalers could not resist.  They lobbed their remaining grenades.  All six exploded at the neck.  Then the boatsteerer and officer of the boat took up their explosive-tipped harpoons and stood ready.

The creature swooped to the right and splashed its flippers in a dance of confusion.  Before the harpoonists could take advantage of its exposed flank, it sounded.

Silence fell on them like sudden darkness.  They'd seen the way the creature stove in the first boat, coming from beneath.  They were helpless against that kind of attack.

"Row!" the officer yelled.

They would present a moving target.  The men rowed madly, with the officer the maddest of the lot as he twisted the steering oars this way and that to create an eccentric path.

But the sound of the oars and the creaking oarlocks made it easier for the creature to locate them.

The men on the mother ship watched in anguish as the creature lifted the whaleboat high. A harpoon bomb went off as the detonator hit the gunwale and many of the screams the watchers heard came from seamen wounded by splinters.

The screaming ended quickly.

"Did you see that!" Lead Foot shouted with unexpected exultation.  Belying his name, he beat everyone to the armory.  With William's help, he hauled out one of the grenade cases and broke it open.  Bombs were passed out.

Arms laden, they ran to the starboard rail.  William felt more comfortable with the grenades.  While no safer than a rusty rifle, he could at least pitch them overboard if anything went wrong.

The two smaller creatures had reduced the dead whale to a skeleton and now they were gnawing on it.  The snapping bones sounded like ice breaking.

Bombs cascaded down the side of the
Lydia
Bailey
, raising violent plumes as they exploded on and around the beasts.  Wood and bone splinters flew up, tagging a few of the sailors through the weather rail.  Rolling and squirming amid the explosions, the animals churned the water into froth.

They pulled away from the ship in a burst of speed that astonished the crew.  In mere seconds their long brown necks popped out of the water a hundred yards away.  The creatures seemed perplexed as they stared back at the ship.

They also appeared unhurt.

"At least we chased them off," William said, his voice quaking like a stay line in a storm.

When the purser heard the boy's words he lifted his head.  Each time a bomb had gone off he'd shouted hysterically from the niche he'd made for himself next to the deck house.  Even as he battled to stay on his feet, William was stung by sympathy for the small man who had stolen his books.  The theft seemed such a pitifully minor transgression that he could no longer understand his thirst for revenge.

Eyes red, but with a hopeful expression, the purser began pulling himself to his feet.  "They're gone?  You chased them--"

Wham
!

The crew was knocked flat when something--

Wham
!

Knocked down again as they tried to rise.

Lead Foot grasped the weather rail.  He caught a glimpse of the largest of the creatures on the starboard beam.

"It's trying to roll us!"

Gear, tackle and men slammed into the main cabin and deck house as the ship leaned wildly to port, then fell forward as it abruptly righted itself.  The process was repeated several times.  The purser screeched.  William reached out for him, but the man rolled out of sight.  The
Lydia
Bailey
lurched back to starboard and the boy was knocked dizzy when his head struck a loose barrel.

When his vision cleared, he was astonished to find Lead Foot grinning at him.  The old man's head was bloody--not whale blood, but his own.  It contrasted wickedly with the grin on his face.  "It
can't
swamp us!  We're fitted with an accumulator!"

His words pierced William's despair.  The
Lydia
Bailey
was one of the few wooden steamships outfitted with the series of powerful volute springs collectively known as an accumulator.  Running along the ship's keelson from the aft stokehold to the forward collision bulkhead, the system was necessary on all modern steel-hulled whalers.  When a whale was winched in on the cutting stage, there was a risk of foundering in the steep Arctic swells and accumulators prevented steamers from rolling over onto their smokestacks.  The owners of the
Lydia
Bailey
, anticipating their prayers for a lucrative voyage would be answered, had a similar series of springs installed while the ship was being overhauled in New York.

The accumulator!  The ship would lean only so far before the volute springs pushed back. The result was that the monster could only shove the
Lydia
Bailey
flush on the beam.  The harsh backlash was the accumulator's abrupt assertion that the ship could not be tipped over.

Lead Foot clapped wildly.  "Ol'
Lydia's
no pushover, that's a fact!"

Their relief turned to horror when a dreadfully burned head appeared at the top of the aft companionway.  One of the stokers.  The boiler grate must have popped open, burying the man in a small mountain of searing coal.  They had not heard his screams over the pounding and it seemed a miracle that he had lived this long.  The ship rocked again and the stoker disappeared. He did not come up again.

Lead Foot gripped the handle of the lazaret door and wiped his chin, the way he did after drinking rum.  The sight of the burned man woke him to the fact that the monster might not be able to capsize them, but it could certainly batter the whaler into a sieve.

"Why does it keep coming at us?" William shouted.

"Maybe she's a mother.  Maybe we bombed her sprats."

Wham
!

"It'll break its head open if it keeps up," the boy reasoned hopefully.

"Don't bet your cockles on it."  Lead Foot twisted his head, desperate thoughts in his eyes. The ship was too unstable to build up steam.  Besides, the tubes were undoubtedly cracked after the severe pounding.  Any high pressure run through them would result in an explosion.

Set the sails?  Not feasible, so long as the creature kept hammering at them.  The sudden tilts and jars made going aloft riskier than hauling sheets in a full-blown gale.

Fight back?  The grenades did no more than annoy them.

The harpoon cannon, then.  Increasing the charge might result in the gun blowing up in someone's face.  But it might also give a harpoon punch enough to penetrate the damn hides of the brutes.  They could multiply the odds in their favor by attaching a foreganger.

"Pegg! 
Breathe!
  Come with me!"

Grasping rails, lines and the few things still lashed down, he followed Lead Foot forward.

"We'll blow him to hell, Pegg.  We'll take the steam saw and filet that big bastard and when we cut the vent we'll find ol' Chandry standing up."

Their wet hands slipped over the equipment in the harpoon chest.  It seemed incredible the monster had not killed itself pounding the stout hull, but it was still hitting strong and the violent movements made it nearly impossible to perform the delicate task of inserting the harpoon charges.  Once he'd managed to screw them in tight and set the prongs, Lead Foot adjusted the steel rings that comprised the foreganger.

"Lead Foot...."

"I'm getting it, I'm getting it...."

"Up behind the capstan...."

Lead Foot looked up for an instant.  One of the smaller creatures was peering through the rail at them.  Its attention was captured by an interesting odor and it sniffed up and down the weather rail a few moments--after which it returned to the bow.

"We've got this to do," said Lead Foot, bending over the chest.  "We lance the big one, the other two won't matter."

Half walking and half crawling across the foredeck, they dragged the harpoons along as carefully as possible.  Lead Foot reached up and swung the muzzle of the cannon inboard.  As the boy looked on worriedly, he slammed two of the pre-made fourteen-ounce charges down the barrel.

Bracketing the gun between them, they lifted the first harpoon and fitted it into the muzzle.  Then, paying out the foreganger line slowly to avoid kinks, they loaded the four attached harpoons into the exchange box next to the gun.  The box was tilted, open at one end, providing a launch ramp.

"It's not going to work, Lead Foot," William gasped.  "Even with the extra charge... it's too far away."

The old man gave him a hard look.  "I know."

"What?" William shouted over the din as the creature gave the ship a particularly hard punch.  The two had to grab the rail hard to keep from being flung over the martingale.

"There's only one way, William.  We have to get the beastie up to the cannon."

"How?"

"I'm going to draw her to you, boy.  You'll have to fire the cannon.  Give me a hand...."  They shoved the exchange box to the other side of the cannon, pointing aft.  "I'll get that thing to come up the starboard beam--I think I can--and when you get a clear shot, do it!"

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll tag it with a few bombs.  When it comes after me--"  He slapped his hands together as he pushed off the rail and struggled aft, dodging the chaos multiplying on the deck.

Taking hold of the hand-grips, William stared at the cannon in his grasp.  The trigger mechanism was similar to a musket's and Lead Foot had primed the cap before leaving.  The big difference, outside of its greater size and charge, was that the gunner had to lean over the breech in order to peer through the sights.  There was a good chance the double charge would explode the barrel--and take William's head in the process.

A plume of seawater fell off to starboard.  Lead Foot was dropping grenades over the side.

The hammering at the hull ceased.  The huge head that had roared years off their lives lifted majestically over Lead Foot--who did not back off, but chucked a grenade right in its face.

A bright flash and a steel-like clap.  The next thing William knew, Lead Foot was hobbling out of the smoke.  Blood gushed from his leg.

"Pegg!" he cried.  "Pegg! 
Breathe!
"

"Behind you!"

A dark shadow burst through the grenade smoke.  The
Lydia
Bailey
shuddered as the creature pressed the hull in its pursuit.

"Get out of the way!"

"Fire, Pegg!"

"Lead Foot!" William sobbed.

"Breathe, Pegg!  Shoot!"

William pulled the trigger the instant the giant jaws came down on his friend.

The harpoon cannon tore out at the base, exploding into a dozen deadly chunks that shrieked through the wheelhouse.  William was hit by a concussive fist that nearly knocked him off the bowsprit.  Flung painfully against the masthead, he fell to the deck.  From there, he gained a kaleidoscopic impression of what followed.

The creature was raising its head with its latest victim when the lead harpoon caught its massive brow.  There was no penetration.  The hard impact detonated the whale bomb prematurely.  Recoiling violently, the creature hit the main cabin with its head, caving it in.  In sequence, the armed harpoons on the foreganger glanced off its thick neck.  Three of them landed among the men abovedecks, the fourth breaking through the deckhouse porthole.  William saw the flash of the bomb inside, but could not hear the blast.  Neither could he hear the other explosions nor the screams of the wounded men.