Read Online Barney and the Secret of the Whales by Jackie French - Free Book Online

and a man when you can feast on whale meat sitting here, bleeding off red juice, all you can eat, and more?
    Already someone had strung ropes about Peg-Leg Tom. He tried to wave them away, lunging towards the rope ladder, but they hauled him up anyway.
    I grabbed the ladder before anyone could tie a rope around me. I was wet and cold. The water had been warmer than I’d expected, but the wind was cold enough to freeze your eyeballs into ice. I’d climbed nearly to therail when I wondered if I should have waited for orders before clambering up. Or diving off the ship. Would I get a cuff about the ear, or even a flogging, for not waiting for orders? Or would I be a hero?
    I flung myself over the gunwale. I meant to land feet first, but was weaker than I thought. I landed hard, on my side. I lay there gasping for a second, then found hands helping me up. It was Call-Me-Bob. He shoved his shoulder under my arm. We staggered across the deck towards the hatch.
    Peg-Leg Tom sat in a small puddle on the deck, his wooden leg sticking out, his eyes daring anyone to help him. He glared at me. ‘No need for that,’ he muttered. I realised he meant my rescue. He held up his tattooed arm. ‘See that? Means I can’t drown, don’t it? And a wooden leg floats. I’d have got out all on me ownsome. No need for you to get yourself a wetting.’
    He pushed himself to his feet — or foot and peg — and stumped off, down to the galley. I realised he must sleep there: I’d never seen him at our cluster of hammocks. I supposed he had his spare clothes there as well.
    Call-Me-Bob helped me below. I changed into dry clothes and another oilskin, then clambered back up on deck, by myself this time.
    Call-Me-Bob was waiting for me. He thrust something black and fishy into my hands. ‘Eat this.’
    It was a piece of whale steak. I took a mouthful, feeling half sick, half starving, most of me still down there in the red and heaving water, or grieving over the very whale I was stuffing into my mouth. It tasted of smoke and meat and death and food — and food was what I needed then, so it tasted mostly of that.
    I can taste it now, just thinking about it.
    â€˜Captain says you can have a sleep,’ said Call-Me-Bob.
    Seemed that was the only thanks I’d get for being a hero. The crew had bigger concerns than one wet boy right now. So I went back below, wrapped myself in a blanket and slept.

CHAPTER 12
    Boiling Down
    It was dark when I woke, but strange red shadows flickered on the walls. The ship still shuddered in the waves and wind. I could hear men stamp and yell above me. There was a new smell now, like when the bush burned far off or Sally scorched the meat, but worse.
    I clambered up on deck and stared. Two great fires had been lit on the massive brick platform on the deck. Flames rose half as high as the main mast and heat pulsed through the wind. For the first time in days I feltwarm. Above the fires two great cauldrons dangled from a thick iron rod.
    Two sailors — impossible to tell who in the blaze of red and blackness — hooked squares of whale skin onto the fire, while others pushed blubber into the pots. Two more used wooden hooks to tip hot oil into barrels tethered ready on the deck. As soon as one cauldron was empty, more blubber was piled into it, while other hands hooked crumpled black things out of the barrels, like burned sheets of paper but big as a cabbage, and threw them into the fire.
    The fire snatched them up, burning higher yet, the flame tops turning blue, and I remembered what Captain Melvill had told me back in Sydney Town. We were boiling the whale on its own skin. The only wood needed had been for the first hour of the fire.
    So this was how a whaling ship could sail away from land for so long, yet still be able to boil each whale down. The whales fuelled the fires that destroyed them.
    The great pots heaved and steamed. Men ran, rolling empty barrels,