The Porpoise

________________________________________________
Title:     The Porpoise
Author: William John Hopkins [More Titles by Hopkins]

Once upon a time there was a wide river that ran into the ocean, and beside it was a little city. And in that city was a wharf where great ships came from far countries. And a narrow road led down a very steep hill to that wharf, and anybody that wanted to go to the wharf had to go down the steep hill on the narrow road, for there wasn't any other way. And because ships had come there for a great many years and all the sailors and all the captains and all the men who had business with the ships had to go on that narrow road, the flagstones that made the sidewalk were much worn. That was a great many years ago.

The river and the ocean are there yet, as they always have been and always will be; and the city is there, but it is a different kind of a city from what it used to be. And the wharf is slowly falling down, for it is not used now; and the narrow road down the steep hill is all grown up with weeds and grass.

Once, in the long ago, the brig _Industry_ had sailed away from the wharf and out into the great ocean on a voyage to India. And she had been gone from the wide river three or four days, and she was well out into the ocean and no land was in sight, but only water and once in a while another ship. But they didn't see ships as often as they had at first, and it was good weather and the wind was fair, so that there wasn't anything much for the sailors to do. The mates kept them as busy as they could, washing down the deck and coiling ropes, and doing a lot of other things that didn't need to be done, for the _Industry_ had just been fixed up and painted and made as clean as she could be made. And that was pretty clean. So the sailors didn't care very much about doing a lot of things that didn't need to be done, but they did them, as slowly as they could, because, if they said that they wouldn't do things that the mates or the captain told them to do, that would be mutiny. And mutiny, at sea, is a very serious thing for everybody. It satisfied Captain Solomon and the mate well enough to have the men do things slowly, so long as they did them. For they knew that the men would do things quickly if there was any need for quickness.

Then, one morning, just as it began to be light, the man who was the lookout thought that he saw something in the water about the ship that didn't look quite like waves. And it got a little lighter so that he could make sure, and he called some others of his watch and told them to look and see the school of porpoises. And they all looked, and those men told others who looked over the side, too, and pretty soon all the men of that watch were leaning on the rail and looking at the porpoises. That made the mate who was on watch look over, too, so that every man on deck was looking over the side into the water. Then the sun came up out of the water.

What they saw was a great many big fishes, all black and shining, and each one had spots of white on its side and a funny-shaped head. Most of them seemed to be about the size of a man, and they swam in a funny sort of way, in and out of the water, so that their backs showed most of the time, and they glistened and shone and their spots of white made them rather a pretty sight. And now and then they spouted little jets of water and spray out of their heads into the air, just as if they were little whales. Porpoises are more like little whales than they are like fishes, for they have to breathe air, just as whales do, and they spout just as whales do, and they are like whales in other ways. They aren't really fishes, at all.

The _Industry_ was sailing very fast, for the wind was fair and strong, and she had all the sails set that she could set; but the porpoises didn't seem to think she was going very fast, for they had no trouble at all to keep up with her and they could play by the way, too. And so they did, hundreds of them. Some of them kept just ahead of her stem, where it cut through the water, and they leaped and gambolled, but the ship never caught up with them. And they were doing the same thing all about.

Seeing the porpoises that kept just ahead of the _Industry_ made the sailors think of something and they all thought of the same thing at once. Perhaps it was because it was about breakfast time. Four of the men went aft to speak to the mate, who was standing where the deck is higher. And the mate didn't wait for them to speak, for he knew just what they were going to ask him. The men had their hats in their hands by the time they got near.

The mate smiled. "Yes, you may," he said. "I'll get 'em." And he went into the cabin.

When he had gone the men grinned at each other and looked pleased and each man was thinking that the mate was not so bad, after all, even if he did make them do work that didn't need to be done, just to kept them busy. But they didn't say anything.

Then the mate came out, and he had two harpoons in his hand.

"There!" he said. "Two's enough. You'd only get in each other's way if there were more. Bend a line on to each, and make it fast, somewhere."

Then Captain Solomon came on deck, and he offered a prize of half a pound of tobacco to the best harpooner. And the men cheered when they heard him, and they took the harpoons and ran forward.

They hurried and fastened a rather small rope on to each harpoon, in the way a rope ought to be fastened to a harpoon, and two of the sailors took the two harpoons and went down under the bowsprit, in among the chains that go from the end of the bowsprit to the stem of the ship. They went there so as to be near the water. They might get wet there, but they didn't care about that. And the other end of the rope, that was fastened to each harpoon, was made fast up on deck, so that the harpoon shouldn't be lost if it wasn't stuck into a porpoise, and so that the porpoise shouldn't get away if it was stuck into him.

One of the sailors was so excited that he didn't hit anything with his harpoon, and the sailors up on deck hauled it in. The other sailor managed to hit a porpoise, but he was excited, too, and the harpoon didn't go in the right place. When the sailors up on deck tried to haul the porpoise in, it broke away, and went swimming off.

Then those sailors came back on deck and two others took their places. One of those others had been harpooner on a whaleship before he went on the _Industry_. He didn't get excited at harpooning a porpoise, but drove his harpoon in at just exactly the right place, and the sailors up on deck hauled that porpoise in. Afterwards, that sailor got the half pound of tobacco that Captain Solomon had offered as a prize, because he harpooned his porpoise just exactly the right way.

The sailor that went with him struck a porpoise, too, but it wasn't quite in the right place, and the men had hard work to get him.

And then other sailors came and tried, and they took turns until they had more porpoises on deck than you would have thought that they could possibly use.

And all the men had porpoise steak for breakfast that morning and porpoise steak for dinner, and porpoise steak for supper. Sailors call porpoises "puffing pigs," and porpoise steak tastes something like pork steak, and sailors like it. But they had it for every meal until there was only one porpoise left, and that one they had to throw overboard.

And that's all.

[The end]
William John Hopkins's short story: The Porpoise

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN