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Updated: May 5, 2025
The fish has disappeared, but his enemies seem to know the direction in which he is going, and are ready awaiting him when he returns to the surface. You now perceive him blowing close to the first boat, the steersman of which draws in the steer-oar and runs forward, whilst the men have all peaked their oars, and remain quiet in their seats.
Atkins, I order you to come alongside and put Miss Remington and that native girl into my boat." "You can go to hell, you Dutch hog!" was the laconic rejoinder from Atkins, as he leant upon his steer-oar and surveyed the captain and Chard with an air of studied insolence. "I'll take no orders from a swab like you. If Miss Remington wants to stay in my boat she shall stay."
The men who have charge of the boats are generally experienced steersmen, and it is an interesting sight to see them take the rush of water with their boats, and with cool intrepidity and skill direct the sweep, or steer-oar to their arrival in safety at the bottom of a rapid of almost a perpendicular fall of many feet, or through a torrent of water of a quarter of a mile or more in length.
Frewen, the missing officer, was as good a whaleman as ever drove an iron or gripped the haft of a steer-oar, and his half-caste boatsteerer Randall Cheyne was the best on the ship. But there was bad blood between young Frewen and his captain, and Cheyne was the cause of it.
Hendry nodded a sullen assent to this, and turned to take the steer-oar from Huka, who, with the other native seamen, had been listening to the discussion between the captain and his officers. Huka gave up the oar, and then telling the other natives in their own tongue to follow him, quietly slipped overboard, and swam towards the second mate's boat. They leapt after him instantly.
Mansfield, of the Hobarton party, fastened to the third whale. Davy came aft to the steer-oar, and Charles Mills went forward to kill his whale. He had hardly got the lance in his hand when the whale threw herself right athwart the nose of the boat. He then sent the lance right into her and killed her stone dead.
All that night, and for the greater part of the following day, he stood in the stern-sheets, grasping the bending steer-oar as the boat swayed and surged along before the gale, and constantly watching lest she should broach to and smother in the roaring seas; the others lay in the bottom, feebly baling out the water, encouraged, urged, and driven to that exertion by the gallant old American seaman.
"There, good-bye once more, Velo. Don't work too hard, and, if a man-of-war comes, be sure you go on board and give the captain that letter. Come, Mrs. Tracey, we must be going. See, Barradas is already hove short, and waiting for us." Helping Mrs. Tracey into the whaleboat, Barry followed, and grasped the long steer-oar. "Give it to her, men, there's the brig breaking her heart to get away."
Ere she could rise from the blackened trough a great curling roller towered high over, and then with a bursting roar fell upon and smothered her. When she rose to the surface Von Hammer was fifty feet away, clinging to the steer-oar.
Huka took the steer-oar, two of the after-oars were double-banked, and Atkins and Harvey sprang forward with their Sniders, and began firing at the captain's boat, though at a range which gave them little chance of hitting her. Every moment, however, the distance was decreasing, and the two men fired steadily and carefully. But the Winchesters still cracked for another five minutes.
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