Memories and Adventures Chapter 4 - Whaling In the Arctic Ocean

**Arthur Conan Doyle** (0:00)
Chapter 4 of Memories and Adventures by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
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Chapter 4, Whaling In the Arctic Ocean.
The Hope, John Gray. Boxing. A terrible mate. Our criminal. First sight of a woman. A hurricane. Dangers of the fishing. Three dips in the Arctic. The idler's boat. Whale taking. Glamour of the Arctic. Effect of voyage.
It was in the hope, under the command of the well-known whaler John Gray, that I paid a seven months' visit to the Arctic seas in the year 1880
I went in the capacity of a surgeon, but as I was only twenty years of age when I started, and as my knowledge of medicine was that of an average third year's student, I have often thought that it was as well that there was no very serious call upon my services.
It came about in this way. One raw afternoon in Edinburgh. Whilst I was sitting reading hard for one of those examinations which blight the life of a medical student, there entered to me one Currie, a fellow student with whom I had some slight acquaintance. A monstrous question which he asked drove all thought of my studies out of my head.
Would you care, said he, to start next week for a whaling cruise? You'll be surgeon, two pound ten a month, and three shillings a ton oil money.
How do you know I'll get the birth, was my natural question. Because I have it myself. I find at this last moment that I can't go, and I want to get a man to take my place.
How about an Arctic kit? You can have mine. In an instant the thing was settled, and within a few minutes the current of my life had been deflected into a new channel.
In little more than a week I was in Peterhead, busily engaged with the help of the steward, packing away my scanty belongings in the locker beneath my bunk of the good ship Hope.
I speedily found that the chief duty of the surgeon was to be the companion of the captain, who was cut off by the etiquette of the trade from anything but very brief and technical talks with his other officers.
I should have found it intolerable if the captain had been a bad fellow, but John Gray of the Hope was a really splendid man, a grand seaman and a serious minded Scott, so that he and I formed a comradeship which was never marred during our long tete-a-tete. I see him now, his ruddy face, his grizzled hair and beard, his very light blue eyes, always looking into far spaces, and his erect muscular figure. Taciturn, sardonic, stern on occasion, but always a good just man at bottom.
There was one curious thing about the Manning of the Hope. The man who signed on as first mate was a little decrepit broken fellow, absolutely incapable of performing the duties. The cook's assistant, on the other hand, was a giant of a man, red bearded, bronzed with huge limbs, and a voice of thunder. But the moment that the ship cleared the harbor, the little decrepit mate disappeared into the cook's galley and acted as scullery boy for the voyage, while the mighty scullery boy walked aft and became chief mate.
The fact was that the one had the certificate but was past sailoring, while the other could neither read nor write, but was as fine a seaman as ever lived. So by an agreement which everybody concerned was party, they swapped their births when they were at sea.
Colin Maclean, with his six foot of stature, his erect stalwart figure, and his fierce red beard, pouring out from between the flaps of his ceiling cap, was an officer by natural selection, which is a higher title than that of a board of trade certificate. His only fault was that he was a very hot-blooded man, and that a little would excite him to a frenzy. I have a vivid recollection of an evening which I spent in dragging him off the steward, who had imprudently made some criticism upon his way of attacking a whale which had escaped. Both men had some rum, which had made the one argumentative and the other violent, and as we were all three seated in a space of about seven by four, it took some hard work to prevent bloodshed.
Every now and then, just as I thought all danger was past, the steward would begin again with his fatuous, No offense, Colin, but all I say is that if you had been a bit quicker on the fush, I don't know how often this sentence was begun, but never once was it ended. For at the word fush, Colin always seized him by the throat, and I, Colin, ran the waist, and we struggled until we were all panting and exhausted. Then, when the steward had recovered a little breath, he would start that miserable sentence once more, and the fush would be the signal for another encounter. I really believe that if I had not been there, the maid would have hurt him, for he was quite the angriest man that I have ever seen.