It was autumn in the South Pacific, but the days stayed warm and sunny, and the ocean was remarkably calm. Ironically, now that we had a full load of whale oil and spermaceti, we saw several large pods of sperm whales which we sailed right past, promising them we would be back.
Our voyage towards Cape Horn was uneventful. By then we were quite far south, and the air grew colder. Again, as we neared the Cape, we saw icebergs as well as penguins, albatrosses, and petrels, including tiny storm petrels, the smallest of the seabirds. The first two days after we arrived near Cape Horn, the wind was in the wrong direction, blowing from the south-east, so we had to wait. Where was that wind when we wanted to come from the Atlantic? We certainly could have used it then. On the third day the wind shifted, and we were able to round the Horn and head north once again.
The wind seldom blows straight from the south, so we had to tack often as the western or eastern winds carried us. On the rare days when the wind was from the north, we furled many of the sails but continued our voyage, always tacking northward.
Adam and I enjoyed our nighttime adventures exploring each other’s bodies and reveling in the sensations we felt. One night, Adam said, “I want to try something I heard about from high-school friends back home.” With that, he told me to sit on the side of his bunk. I was by then totally naked and very erect. Adam couldn’t kneel in front of me, so he bent over, placing his hands on the bunk on either side of me. At first he used one hand to rub my cock in the familiar way, but then he removed his hand and bent so that his mouth was at my shaft.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Just wait,” he said. As I watched, his tongue came out and touched the tip of my cock. I whimpered. Then he slid his lips down over my shaft until he had it all in his mouth. From there he moved slowly up and down with his lips paying special attention to my cock’s tip with his tongue. My whimper changed to a full-throated moan.
As I felt the delicious tension rise once again and I writhed on the bunk, I said, “I am going to shoot!” And I did! It was the most wonderful, strong, exquisite feeling I had ever had.
“Did you like that?” he asked after he had finished swallowing my baby juice and cleaning my cock.
All I said was, “Get up here.” He sat on the bunk, and I knelt before him. It was not long before he was trembling and moaning, and then his juice was hitting the back of my throat. It almost caused me to gag, but I managed to avoid that.
I cleaned him off and we sat side by side on the bunk, talking quietly. I asked him what he had heard the students say.
“Well, they were talking about how they liked their girlfriends to suck their cocks, and in some cases describing the feelings in detail. Should we continue it?” he asked, grinning.
I nodded enthusiastically, kissed him goodnight, and climbed up to my bed.
Father decided to put into the port of Rio de Janeiro again for water and food supplies. We remained for a couple of days. The only crew members who went ashore were those who towed the barge of water barrels or who went with Father to get supplies, mostly fruits, vegetables, and chickens. Then we were once again heading home. Until now this last part of the voyage had seemed almost too easy.
When we crossed the equator, we had no crew members who had never crossed, so we needed no special ceremony. Still, the sailors who had been in costume before once again dressed up and we had a celebration as we sailed into the northern hemisphere.
Just north of the equator, we became stuck in the doldrums again. Remembering what had happened to Adam on our outward voyage, nobody wanted to go for a swim, so we just hung about on the deck, often doing little chores or working on scrimshaw.
A crew member, Ricardo, taught me and Adam how to carve and color a sperm whale’s tooth, using just our knives and nails we got from Chips. I’m afraid my attempt was not very good, but I have always kept it as a reminder of the voyage.
As we worked, Adam and I began to discuss our future. He knew he would never go to sea again. While I had grown up always thinking of sailing, being near him was much more important to me than that dream. We discussed getting jobs in New Bedford since neither of us planned on any more schooling.
One day, Adam said, “We really should begin to think about living together.”
“I wonder what our parents would think,” I mused.
“They will just have to live with it,” he replied, and I realized I agreed with him. And so we started to plan on a future very much together.
Sailing around the coast of Brazil and into the Caribbean, Father began to pace around the deck and gaze anxiously at the sky. At first he would not say what he was worried about. At last, he told us that the barometer was falling rapidly and was now lower than he had ever seen it before. A falling barometer meant that a storm was nearing, but I did not know what a really low reading meant.
At first, the ocean was very calm, almost like a lake. But soon the wind began to pick up and the swells grew larger. We reduced sails to only the fore- and main-topsails, which we needed to keep us moving. Once again, we took in the whaleboats and lashed them to the deck.
Through the night the winds continued to increase, blowing very hard from the west, while the swells came from the east.
By morning, water was racing over the deck and Father said we were in a hurricane. The ship listed first one way and then the other, and it became very difficult to walk about. Sometimes the ship heeled over almost to the railing and stayed there until a lull in the wind let her straighten again. Meanwhile Father ordered that no one should be on deck unless they wore a rope lashed to one of the masts so they would not be blown or washed overboard. By then we were in a full-force, early season hurricane.
Rain poured down in torrents. We remained below decks as much as possible, but sometimes the crew needed to adjust the few sails we had not furled, and of course there were always some men on deck to steer the ship.
A crew member discovered a new problem. The ship was leaking into the hold, where our barrels of oil were stored. We had to man the pumps day and night to pump water out as fast as it leaked in. Of course, I took my turn. Adam tried to help but found he was unable to and felt badly that he could not take his turn.
When I returned to the cabin, worn out from pumping, my trousers were soaked through, but the air was still warm even in the rain and wind, so that I was wearing neither a shirt nor boots.
Father kept the ship sailing diagonally north-eastward, facing the swells, which now towered over the ship. From the deck, it looked like each swell would pour over and flood us, but each time the ship rode up and over the swell and down the other side.
As the wind howled, the ship pitched up and down and back and forth, tossed by the swells and blown by the wind. The top of the foremast broke away and smashed a railing as it fell. Crew members had to cut loose the lines which had held it and get it overboard or it could have done considerable damage to the ship.
A few hours later, the barrels of oil which we had lashed to the deck broke loose. They rolled off the ship, smashing railings as they went. The chicken coop full of chickens blew off the deck and into the sea. Then the cook’s shack blew away, the stove remaining firmly attached to the deck. Fortunately, Cook was not in the shack!
Somehow, we managed to sail out of the worst of the wind, but the swells continued to roll towards us from the east. Father, Adam, and I ventured out to see the damage. Because of the storm’s noise, the only way we could talk on deck was to shout. I shouted to Father, “Are we in danger of sinking?”
“That all depends on how bad the leak is!” he shouted back.
I yelled, “That is not very comforting.” I did not think it was funny when Adam laughed at me!
We turned more northward from the east, and again we went diagonally with the wind, trying to get north of the storm. Once again, the ship heeled way over.
In the night we heard a terrible crash. One of the crew members rushed to inform Father that the mainmast had broken and was partly in the ocean.
We all rushed on deck and began to hack away at the lines attached to the mast which had smashed two whaleboats as it fell. None of us was really paying attention to anything but freeing the mast and getting it overboard when a huge wave slammed across the deck, and before I knew it, I was washed overboard. I sank below the surface, terrified and panicking. As hard as I tried, I was unable to find the surface. I did not even know which way was up! For all I knew I might be swimming down instead of towards the surface. The water swirled powerfully around me, constantly throwing me about. My heart was beating like a booming tom-tom. I was certain I was going to die.
Then I felt a hard tug on my waist and remembered the line I had tied there and attached to the bottom of the mast. Crew members were finally able to pull me, spluttering and vomiting, back on board. I do not suppose now that I was in the water for longer than a minute or two, but at the time it seemed like forever. As I lay on the deck, the crew was able to get the mast overboard at last.
The only masts we had left were the lower part of the foremast and the bare mizzenmast. We quickly unfurled the foremast and mizzenmast’s main sails, hoping they would hold without breaking the rest of the masts.
It seemed like forever, but eventually the winds began to die down. The storm passed, and there we were, somewhere in the Caribbean Sea, bobbing about on the still huge swells in a leaking ship with very little sail. Fortunately, as the winds lessened, the leaking also slowed, and to my relief, for the moment we were in no danger of sinking.
There was a great deal of damage done to the main deck by the falling masts. In one place a falling yardarm had punctured the deck, letting rain and sea water pour in below. The roof of the fo’c’sle had been smashed as well. With the violent movement of the ship, many of the seams in the deck had opened, so that even though the pumps were keeping the hold fairly dry, water poured into the fo’c’sle and lower deck, where it sloshed about up to our knees. We formed a bucket brigade to the lower deck, filling buckets and handing them up to the main deck, where men emptied them overboard and passed them back down.
Meanwhile Chips repaired the roof of the fo’c’sle and the holes in the deck. Finally, he knocked together another cabin for Cook. Sadly, he could do nothing for the poor chickens, gone forever to the bottom of the sea.
It took two days working night and day to get our deck and the fo’c’sle reasonably dry. By then we were all so weary, we just lay around on the main deck soaking in the sun, which had miraculously reappeared.
Sailing slowly north, we passed an abandoned ship. We prayed that all the men had been saved but we had no way of knowing.
Father worried that the hurricane would turn north along the North American coast, but at last he decided it had gone into the Gulf of Mexico. It could do us no further harm, although there would certainly be damage to the cities around the Gulf.
His next worry was what to do about the leak or leaks in the hold, but we kept pumping day and night and the leak did not seem to get any worse. Father thought about putting in at some port in Georgia or Virginia, but he did not want to lose more time. Very slowly we made our way north, tacking constantly as we went. We ran into thunderstorms off Virginia. Those caused the leak to get a little worse, but once we were out of them and the swells and wind calmed down, the leak seemed to slow again.
Day after day we sailed slowly north. Father helped me and Adam follow our course on the maps and charts. One day we passed Washington, DC. In the following days we passed Maryland, then Delaware, and finally neared Pennsylvania. It took nearly two days to pass that state before we were east of New Jersey and then New York.
We had been sailing quite close to shore in case we ran into more problems. At New York we had to sail east to get around Long Island. Then we turned west into Long Island Sound and headed towards New Bedford.
On October 27, we finally saw the welcomed sight of New Bedford and slowly turned towards her harbor. When people on shore saw the condition we were in, they came out in little sailboats and rowboats to greet us and see if we were alright or needed any help. As the first boats neared us we cheered, waving hats and shirts and anything else we could find to wave.
Slowly, slowly, we inched into the harbor and came to rest as we lowered the sails and the anchor. I think we all gave huge sighs of relief. I know Father did because I heard him.
We stayed on board that night, with crew members continuing to take turns pumping. The next morning, we weighed anchor and boats towed us to a wharf where we could unload our barrels of oil and bundles of whalebone.
Mother, Jessica, and Daniel went ashore while Adam and I remained on board to help with the unloading. It took a few days to unload everything before father sent the ship to Fairhaven for repairs.
At last Father, Adam, and I went ashore. Being on land after that storm and all the rolling of the ship felt very strange, as though the land should be moving. It seemed I’d now have to regain land legs.
Grandmother and Grandfather, Mother’s parents, came down to meet us in a wagon and drove us and our sea chests up Union Street and to our home. Before they drove Adam to his house, he hugged me and Father. There were tears in both his eyes and mine, for our adventure was over and we knew that probably neither of us would ever go whaling again.
But what an adventure it had been! We had sailed nearly to Europe and Africa, then to South America and then into the South Pacific and North Pacific, stopping at various points along the way. We went to the Hawaiian Islands and north to the Sea of Japan then south nearly to Australia before heading for home. We had chased and caught whales and survived a terrible storm. We had seen wonderful sights, so many different lands and flowers and trees. Certainly not many boys my age had had such an adventure. But I was glad to be home again and looking forward to seeing my friends. Winter would soon come, with snow and skating and sledding.