The man roared with laughter as the boys raced off like startled rabbits. He gave the reins a flick and urged the horse through the whalebone gate. He tied up in front of the big house, which resembled an octagonal wedding cake layered with red and yellow frosting. He was still chuckling to himself as he climbed the porch steps and announced his arrival using the brass door knocker shaped like a whale’s tail.
Footsteps approached. A man opened the door, and a smile crossed his pallid face.
“ Strater,what a pleasant surprise,” Caleb Nye said.
“Good to see you too, Caleb. Been meaning to stop by, but you know how it is.”
“Of course,” Caleb said. He stepped aside. “Come in, come in.”
Caleb’s skin had grown even whiter over the years. Age had added wrinkles to skin that looked like parchment to begin with, but, despite his premature aging, he still retained the boyish smile and puppy-dog eagerness that had endeared him to his whaling colleagues.
He led the way to a spacious library lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The wall sections not devoted to books on the subject of whaling were decorated with large, colorful posters that had the same motif: a man caught in the jaws of a sperm whale.
Strater went up to one particularly lurid poster. The artist had made liberal use of crimson paint to depict blood flowing from the harpoon shafts into the water. “We made a bundle of money out of that Philadelphia show.”
Caleb nodded. “Standing room only, night after night, thanks to your skills as a showman.”
“I’d be nothing without my star attraction,” Strater said, turning.
“And I have you to thank for this house and everything I own,” Caleb said.
Strater flashed a gap-toothed grin. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s putting on a show. The minute I laid eyes on you, I saw the potential for fame and fortune.”
Their partnership had begun a few nights after the Princessdocked in New Bedford. The oil barrels had been off-loaded, and the owners tallied the take and calculated the lays. Crewmen who didn’t have wives or sweethearts to go home to went off in a raucous mob to celebrate in the waterfront bars that were more than willing to relieve the whalers of their hard-won earnings.
Caleb had stayed on the ship. He was there when the captain came back onto the Princesswith Caleb’s pay and asked if he was going home to his family farm.
“Not like this,” Caleb had replied with a sad smile.
The captain handed the young man the pitifully small amount of money he had earned for his years at sea. “You have my permission to stay on board until the ship sails again.”
As he walked down the ramp, the captain felt a heavy sorrow for the young man’s misfortune, but he soon put it out of his mind as his thoughts shifted to his own promising future.
About the same time, Strater had been contemplating a much bleaker outlook as he sat in a seedy bar a few blocks from the ship. The former carnival pitchman was down on his luck and almost broke. He was nursing a mug of ale when the crewmen from the Princessburst into the bar and proceeded to get drunk with all the energy they had devoted to killing whales. Strater perked up his ears and listened with interest to the story of Caleb Nye, the green hand who was swallowed by a whale. The bar patrons greeted the tale with loud skepticism.
“Where’s your Jonah now?” a barfly shouted above the din.
“Back at the ship, sittin’ in the dark,” he was told. “See for yourself.”
“The only thing I want to see is another ale,” the barfly said.
Strater slipped out of the noisy bar into the quiet night and made his way along a narrow street to the waterfront. He climbed the ramp to the lantern-lit deck of the Princess.Caleb had been standing by the rail, staring at the sparkling lights of New Bedford. The young man’s features were indistinct, but they seemed to glow with a pale luminosity. Strater’s showman juices started flowing.
“I have a proposition for you,” Strater told the young man. “If you accept it, I can make you a rich man.”
Caleb listened to Strater’s proposal and saw the possibilities. Within weeks, flyers and posters were plastered around New Bedford with a blaring headline in circus typeface:
SWALLOWED BY A WHALE.
A Living Jonah Tells His Tale.
Strater hired a hall for the first show and had to turn away hundreds. For two hours, Caleb told his thrilling story, standing with harpoon in hand in front of a moving diorama.
With Caleb’s whaling earnings, Strater had hired an artist who had painted reasonably accurate pictures on a long strip of canvas several feet high. The backlit canvas was slowly unrolled to reveal pictures of Caleb in the whaleboat, the attack by the whale, and a fanciful depiction of his legs sticking out from between the mammal’s jaws. There were images of exotic, palm-studded locales, and their inhabitants as well.
The show played to enthralled audiences, especially in churches and halls in cities and towns along the eastern seaboard. Strater sold story booklets, adding pictures of half-nude dancing native girls to spice up the narrative. After a few years, Strater and Caleb retired from public life as rich as the wealthiest whaling captains.
Strater bought a mansion in New Bedford, and Caleb built his wedding-cake house in the village of Fairhaven across the harbor from the whaling city. From the roof turret, he watched the whaling ships come and go. He rarely went out in daylight.
When he did leave his mansion, he covered his head and shaded his face with a hood.
He became known to his neighbors as the Ghost, and he became a generous benefactor who used his fortune to build schools and libraries for the community. In return, the townspeople protected the privacy of their homegrown Jonah.
Caleb guided Strater into a large chamber that was empty except for a comfortable revolving chair in the center. The diorama from Caleb’s show wrapped around the walls. Anyone sitting in the chair could pivot and see the “Living Jonah” story from beginning to end.
“Well, what do you think?” Caleb asked his friend.
Strater shook his head. “It almost makes me want to go on the road with the show again.”
“Let’s talk about it over a glass of wine,” Caleb said.
“I’m afraid we don’t have time,” Strater said. “I carry a message to you from Nathan Dobbs.”
“The captain’s oldest son?”
“That’s right. His father is dying and would like to see you.”
“ Dying!That’s not possible! You have told me yourself that the captain looks as hale and hearty as a young bull.”
“It’s not an ailment that brought him down, Caleb. There was an accident at one of his mills. A loom fell over and crushed his ribs.”
Caleb’s old man’s face lost its last faint traces of color. “When can I see him?” he asked.
“We must go now,” Strater replied. “His time is short.”
Caleb rose from his chair. “I’ll get my coat and hat.”
THE ROAD TO THE Dobbs mansion wound around New Bedford Harbor and climbed to County Street. Carriages lined the driveway and street in front of the Greek Revival mansion. Nathan Dobbs greeted Strater and Caleb at the door and thanked them profusely for coming. He was tall and lanky, the younger image of his father.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Caleb said. “How is Captain Dobbs?”
“Not long for this world, I’m afraid. I’ll take you to him.”
The mansion’s spacious parlor and adjoining hallways overflowed with the captain’s ten children and countless grandchildren. There was a murmur as Nathan Dobbs entered the parlor with Strater and the strange hooded figure. Nathan asked Strater to make himself comfortable and escorted Caleb to the captain’s room.