The clank-clank of the mincer is unceasing, tall tongues of flame from the funnels of the try-works make long red smears upon the gloom as they stream away to leeward, and the two harpooners feed the bubbling cauldrons with minced blubber, bale out the sufficiently boiled oil, and watch with unceasing care against a sudden splash of cold water into the pots, which may cause the oil to rise in a moment, and, overflowing into the furnaces, set fire to the ship. All the watch is so busy that there is no time to notice the weather, or moralise upon this most romantic scene--a ship’s company who, having succeeded in winning from a hostile element the spoil of the mightiest creature known, have now converted their vessel into a floating factory, and under the most extraordinarily difficult conditions conceivable are engaged in realising that spoil in order to convey it to their home port thousands of miles away.
Here let us leave them for awhile, and exercising our privilege of instant transition, glance back at the quiet village whence the departure of our hero withdrew so much consolation and manly assistance in the old age of his parents.
Saturday night in the Eddy homestead. In their respective chairs, occupied by them with hardly a break through thirty-eight years of ideally happy married life, sat Farmer Eddy and his wife. The labours of the week were ended, the hired people gone to rest, and husband and wife sat face to face as they had done for so many years, but never until the last six months with such weary hearts. Mrs. Eddy had aged very much. Not that any care for her boy’s spiritual welfare worried her--she felt as certain of him in that respect as if he had been always under her eye. But since his departure from New Bedford in the _Xiphias_ it was as if he had passed into the eternal silence, and although she said little her heart-hunger was terrible. His last letter was but half-a-dozen lines, hastily scrawled and posted without signature, telling his parents that he was outward bound on a South Sea whaling voyage, and in the hurry of the moment omitting to mention even the name of his ship. Naturally, therefore, as the days went by lengthening into weeks, the weeks into months, the disease of uncertainty made her its prey, and she aged fast, perhaps as much from the heroic effort she made to conceal her anxiety from her husband as from its direct effect.