Medusa

sick whale.

Something was moving inside the big stomach pouch. A deckhand assumed it was a giant squid, a favorite meal of sperm whales. He used his sharp spade to cut into the pouch, but, instead of tentacles, a human leg flopped out through the opening. He peeled back the stomach walls to reveal a man curled up in a fetal position. The cutter and another deckhand grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled the limp form out onto the deck. An opaque, slimy substance enveloped the man’s head. The first mate came over and washed away the slime with a bucket of water.

“It’s Caleb!” the mate shouted. “It’s the green hand.”

Caleb’s lips moved, but they made no sound.

Dobbs had been supervising the removal of blubber from the whale. He strode over and stared at Caleb for a moment before he ordered the mates to carry the green hand to his cabin. They stretched the youth out on the captain’s bunk, stripped off his slime-coated clothes, and wrapped him in blankets.

“Lord, I’ve never seen anything like it,” the first mate muttered.

The handsome farm boy of eighteen had been transformed into a wizened old man of eighty. His skin was bleached ghostly white. A lacework of wrinkles puckered the skin of his hands and face as if they had been soaked in water for days. His hair was like strands on a cottonweed.

Dobbs laid a hand on Caleb’s arm, expecting him to be as icy cold as the corpse he resembled.

“He’s on fire,” he murmured.

Assuming his role as the ship’s doctor, Dobbs placed wet towels over Caleb’s body to bring down the fever. From a black leather medicine case he produced a vial of patent medicine containing a heavy dose of opium and got a few drops down Caleb’s throat. The youth rambled for a few minutes before slipping into a deep sleep. He slept for more than twenty-four hours. When Caleb’s eyelids finally fluttered open, he saw the captain sitting at his desk writing in the log.

“Where am I?” he mumbled through dry, crusted lips.

“In my bunk,” Dobbs growled. “And I’m getting damned sick of it.”

“Sorry, sir.” Caleb furrowed his brow. “I dreamed I died and went to hell.”

“No such luck, lad. Seems the spermaceti had a taste for farm boys. We pulled you out of his belly.”

Caleb remembered the whale’s round eye, then being tossed into the air, arms and legs spinning like a pinwheel, and the shock of hitting the water. He recalled moving along a dark, yielding passage, gagging for breath in the heavy, moist air. The heat had been almost unbearable. He had quickly passed out.

A horrified look came to his pale, wrinkled face. “The whale et me!”

The captain nodded. “I’ll get cook to fetch you some soup. Then it’s back to the fo’c’sle with you.”

The captain relented and let Caleb stay in his cabin until all the blubber had been rendered into oil and stored in barrels, then he summoned the forecastle hands on deck. He praised them for their hard work, and said:

“You all know that a whale ate the green hand like Jonah in the Bible. I’m happy to say that young Caleb will soon be back at his work. I’m cutting his pay for time lost. The only one on this ship who’s allowed to shirk his job is a dead man.”

The comment brought a few ayes and grins from the assembled hands.

Dobbs continued. “Now, men, I must tell you that young Caleb looks different than you remember him. The foul juices of the whale’s innards have bleached him whiter than a boiled turnip.” He cast a stern eye on the crew. “I’ll allow no one on this ship to make light of another man’s misfortune. That’s all.”

The ship’s officers helped Caleb climb onto the deck. The captain asked Caleb to remove a square of cloth that covered his head, shadowing his face like a monk’s cowl. A collective gasp came from the crew.

“Take a good look at our Jonah and you’ll have something to tell your grandchildren,” the captain said. “He’s no different from the rest of us under that white skin. Now, let’s get us some whales.”

The captain had purposely called Caleb a Jonah, a seaman’s name for a sailor who attracted bad luck. Maybe if he made light of it he’d suck the wind out of the sails of unfavorable comparisons to the biblical character who’d been swallowed by a great fish. A few hands quietly suggested heaving Caleb over the side. Fortunately, everyone was too busy for mischief. The sea that had been so barren now teemed with whales. There was no doubt that the ship’s fortunes had changed for the better. It was as if the Princess had become a magnet for every whale in the ocean.

Every day, the boats were launched after cries from the lookout. The cast-iron try-pots bubbled like witches’ cauldrons. An oily pall of black smoke hid the stars and sun and turned the sails a dark gray. The cook sawed away on his fiddle. Within months of Caleb’s encounter with the whale, the ship’s hold was filled to capacity.

Before the long voyage home, the ship had to be resupplied and the weary crew given shore leave. Dobbs put into Pohnpei, a lush island known for its handsome men, beautiful women, and their willingness to provide services and goods to visiting whalemen. Whaling vessels from every part of the world crowded the harbor.

Dobbs was Quaker by upbringing and didn’t indulge in spirits or native women, but his religious beliefs took second place to his sailing orders: maintain harmony among his men and bring home a shipload of oil. How he accomplished these tasks was left up to him. He laughed heartily as boatloads of drunken and raucous crewmen stumbled back on board or were fished out of the water into which they’d fallen.

Caleb stayed on board and watched the comings and goings of his fellow hands with a benign smile. The captain was relieved that Caleb showed no interest in shore leave. The natives were friendly enough, but Caleb’s bleached hair and skin might cause problems with the superstitious islanders.

Dobbs paid a courtesy call to the American consul, a fellow New Englander. During the visit the consul was notified that a tropical sickness had struck the island. Dobbs cut his men’s shore leave short. In his log he wrote:

Last day of shore leave. Captain visits U.S. Consul A. Markham, who conducted tour of ancient city named Nan Madol. Upon return, Consul advised of sickness on island. Ended liberty and left island in a hurry.

The remnants of the crew stumbled back onto the ship and promptly fell into a rum-soaked snooze. The captain ordered the sobered-up hands to raise the anchor and set sail. By the time the cherry-eyed men were roused from their bunks and ordered back to work, the ship was well at sea. With a steady breeze, Dobbs and his men would be sleeping in their own beds in a few months time.

The sickness struck the Princess less than twenty-four hours after it left the port.

A forecastle hand named Stokes awakened around two in the morning and raced to the rail to purge his stomach. Several hours later, he developed a fever and a vivid rash over much of his body. Brownish red spots appeared on his face and grew in size until his features looked as if they were carved in mahogany.

The captain treated Stokes with wet towels and sips of bottled medicine. Dobbs had him moved to the foredeck and placed under a makeshift tent. The forecastle was a pesthole in the best of circumstances. Fresh air and sunlight might help the man, and isolation could possibly prevent the spread of his illness.

But the disease spread through the foremast hands like a windblown brush fire. Men crumpled to the deck. A rigger fell from a yardarm onto a pile of sails, which fortunately broke his fall. An impromptu infirmary was set up on the foredeck. The captain emptied his medicine kit. He feared that it would only be a matter of hours before he and the officers fell ill. The Princess would become a phantom ship, drifting at the mercy of wind and currents until it rotted.

The captain checked his chart. The nearest landfall was called Trouble Island. Whalers normally shunned the place. A whaling crew had burned a village and killed some natives there after an argument over a stolen cask of nails, and the inhabitants had attacked several whalers since the incident. There was no choice. Dobbs took the helm and put the ship on a straight course for the island.

The Princess soon limped into a cove lined with white sand beaches, and the ship’s anchor splashed into the clear green water with a rattle of chain. The island was dominated by a volcanic peak. Wisps of smoke could be seen playing around its summit. Dobbs and the first mate took a small boat ashore to replenish freshwater while they could. They found a spring a short distance inland and were on their way back to the ship when they came across a ruined temple. The captain gazed at the temple’s walls, overgrown with vines, and said, “This place reminds me of Nan Madol.”

“Pardon me, sir?” the first mate said.