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Ben Gibson loved money; but he admitted to me that a fifteen hundred dollar prize for the voyage would scarcely pay him for the work and grind of our daily life aboard the Scarboro.
Perhaps it's a she with a calf and has got behind the school. We'll see. Now, boys! tumble up and let's get the rags on her." We went at the sails with a will and for the first time I saw every yard of canvas the Scarboro could set flung to the breeze. The old bark began to hustle.
He expected to study navigation with his uncle and be turned off a full-fledged mate, with a certificate, on his return from this whaling voyage. However, these facts I learned later. Just now I was only anxious to know what was to be done with me, and if there was a likelihood of the captain of the Scarboro touching at any port from which I might make a quick passage home.
That she had changed her mind, or at least her tactics, in regard to us was important news. "She came with Mr. and Mrs. Haile," Alicia continued. "It was the first time she had ever been inside Hynds House. Think of that, Sophy! There were some girls here, and a few boys, naturally, Jimmy Scarboro among them. Should you think that accounted for his mama's presence, Sophy?
Thus far we had suffered no loss from the monsters which the Scarboro was hunting; but as this old bull shot like an arrow for the scarred side of the bark, which was hove to less than half a mile away, it did look as though she was due to get a bad bump. We were on a short line, however, for the bull had not sounded deeply.
He knew old Tom would not give up anything easy, and so he brought the Scarboro into hailing distance and we told him what had happened. We had caught a Tartar; the whale wouldn't come to the surface and we couldn't let go without losing our line and iron. It was no use jerking on that line. One can't play a whale like a rock bass!
I was thankful, when I saw the week's weather that followed my boarding the Scarboro, that I had been saved from further battling with the elements in the sloop. Ben Gibson advised me to write fully of my situation and prospects and have the letter, or letters, ready to put aboard any mail-carrying ship we might meet.
It was that of my cousin, Paul Downes Paul Downes, here on the de la Plata, thousands of miles from home, and evidently working in the menial position of cook's helper on the steamship, Peveril! Is it to be wondered that I was amazed? I had told nobody aboard the Scarboro the particulars of my home-life, or the incidents leading to my being swept out to sea in the Wavecrest.
"I am not your friend, the Professor," I admitted. "And the voice!" he muttered, staring down at me. "It's his voice. I ain't put in my winters with him this last dozen years and more to be mistook in his voice. Say, boy, who be you?" "Clint Webb is my name," I replied. "Where do you hail from?" "Massachusetts. Late of the Scarboro whaling bark." "How old be you?" "Going on seventeen."
The other close friend that I made aboard the Scarboro during the first few days of the voyage, was old Tom Anderly. He was the bewhiskered old barnacle who had welcomed the possibility of getting oil in the bark's tanks from the dead whale, when I had first come aboard.
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