WHALE HUNTING

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 4 August 1904, Page 8

WHALE HUNTING

By MARK SULLIVAN.

BE wm * Norwegian, but bis sea English was as good a* the king's, m big and muscular, -with e. rare eomsimttion of weight end wirin«M. Hl* feee and eyes were stem enough when he shouted orders from the "bridge, but, when playing the host in his cabin, a* merry at a.Santa. Claue—*rithout the whiskersT His skin was Csßnsd by the salt spray and burned by the sun of every degree of latitude grhera ships have ever been. He had caught whales in every sea, from the Persian gulf to Baffin's bay; and a few Tears ago he abandoned the old way of New Bedford and all three-y ear-long, round - the - world sruise in s sailing' vessel—to try the . Adaptation of steam to -whaling. For '-' 4b* big brick oven on the deck to boil j the blubber (which all remember -who know The Cruise of the Cachalot) he substituted a permanent factory for reining the oil, located on the northern shore of Newfoundland. From this he steamed out to the whaling grounds each morning and back at night, raremly without a prize. For the old method of throwing a harpoon by hand from, a small boat he substituted a harpoon gun from the bow of hi* whaler; and with these improvement* conducted a „_ business that wiH soon make the few ' sorvivmg New Bedford AalHng whalers ss obsolete as -wooden plows. I lay in hk spare bunk, across the narrow eabin from his own, and dropped to sleep as he finished a tale, strangely like Kipling's "Three Sealers," of a fight between rival crews for a dead whale in the Okhotsk sea. Only s minute later, it seemed, I bumped my head against the top of the bunk to the quick awakening of an excited Norwegian craft cry from the top of the companionway. Thecaptam leaped from bis bunk. He waited not for shoes nor for other clothes than those he sespt in, but bounded up the steps, fronting orders as he ran. While I dressed I could feel the quick stopping, the short advances and retreats of the engines, and I knew we were stalking gams. JWhen I reached the deck the captain had one hand on the gun, ■winging it about on its pivot. With' the other he was making signals to the engineer to stop, to go foward a little, or to go back. Following his eyes, I caught sight of our game. It looked like a huge, cigar-shaped piece of smooth, shiny- slete-colorad India robber, rising at regular intervals so that four or five feet of his diameter and 40. feet of his length showed like a mound j on the smooth water. With alternate rising and dipping he was gliding smeothly forward, without apparent exertion, but with tremendous speed, and in a perfectly straight line. We \ were approaching him from behind at an angle, so that his course and ours were tb* sides of a V. j The captain on the raised platform'

e captain on the raised platform In the bow, following with* the mouth of bis cannon the coarse of the whale, ] was the personification of alertness.! The crew were grouped behind him as' eager and expectant aa if they had. never caught a whale before. One of them touched me on the ahoulder and poiated silently a mile away, where a dozen other whales were spouting fine column* of vapor. When I <turne-i again to our whale he had risen once more, and we were within 30 feet of him. Every person on the ship was in a state of tiptoe alertness. Suddenly came the crash of the gun. I saw a hidefcras red zigzag gash on the broad side of the whale; I-heard the rumbling roar of the time bomb at the point of the harpoon exploding in the whale's vitals. On deck there was a convulsive pandemonium. The captain, in the delirium of the hunter at the death of his quarry, was shrieking shrill staccato orders. The crew were leapicgtio their posts. Suddenly I felt the bovr of the ressel give a jerk beneath me** thea tremble a moment, and slowly dip. The whale had gene straight down-. ward. The repe attached to the harpoon shot over the bow so fast that the could not follow; where ittouched the wood a curling column of smoke arose. The windlass rpun round like a boy's top. It hummed and buzzed with the noise of a flying locomotive. Coil after coil of rope leaped into nothingness like a magician's flower pcvts. Gradually the windlass ceased to spin.

She rfxale bad toucbed bottom. Tbe

captain signaled to back the ship, le. t he should come up afoul of tie propeller. The rope floated slack on the water. There wu a minute or two of silent.expectantsuspe nse. Then. rigM in front of thebow.so close Icouldhave poked my finger again? flabby blubber, up rosethe giani .nose— -up, up, up till he to-wered full 15 feet above the rail! I jumped back in genuine fear that he would topple over on the deck. Then he turned a somersault with a splash and drenched us>*all. He rose again, churning the water white, raised his tail quite 20 feetand slapped the -water with a noise like a thunderclap at our very toe*. He turned round and round, -wrapping the rope about his huge body, then shot straight forward on the surface, skipping from wave to wave like a swallow. He reached the end of his slack rope with, a jerk that shook the ship from stem to stern. There was an instant tug of war between th* whale and the reversed engine*. Then the whale won and foT a minute pulled the vessel forward with him.

Again the windlass wh'irred and whizzed, but with diminishing speed. Far out at the end of his two miles of rope, the whale churned and lashed the water and blew big blasts of hot vapor. Thecrew sawthe end and relaxed their tenseness. They gave hint half an hour or so to end. his convulsion*. Then the captain shouted the order to wind ia the rope. % As the whale felt the pull he gave one feeble, dying jump. The men stopped a minute, then continued slowly to pull in. Finally, the huge, 1 * inert, flabby body floated belly upward, just off the bow. They lowered a boat, passed a ohain about the narrow circumference where th* tail widens, and grappled him to the side of the vessel. I could see a dozen quarreling porpoises easting the tongue of the monster that had been an hour before alive and, to those scavengers, invincible. The captain gave a sigh and a smile of content and leaned over the side to measure with his eye the size of his prize. The crew busied themselves witlh loading the harpoon gun again and putting things in order.

All thia wae before five in the mornind—and before breakfast. After the meal, when we came otf deck again, there had risen a heavy Iceland wind. The captain sniffed it and glanced at the choppy sea. " 'Twill be a bad day for the feesJh," he said; and went aloft to his bridge to watch, with his glasses for enotiieT "blow." With the wind came rain, and the two did, indeed, make bad Ashing. Not that the whales went in out of the wet, as an irreverent sailor must tell the guileless landsmen; there was scarce a time when we could not see a dozen "blows" within a five-mile radius. Often, when we were not prepared fcithern, they would swim right past us with all the dignity of an ocean liner speeding past a bobbing fishing craft. They never seemed to be merely browsing idly around—they were always swimming in a straight line, and always very fast, as if they had important business somewhere on the coast of Sweden. When they were close by we could follow them readily with the eye, and see them rising and dipping at Tegular intervals. off, milestones of their course were their "blows," It is the one conspicuous mammal characteristic remaining to this expatriated land animal who has chosen the environment of fish for his abode; once in so often he must breathe. And as his taking breath involves blowing a 20-foot high pillar of white vapor into the air, it is this "mark of the beasitf' and of the beast's natural habitat that betrays him to his enemies. Late in the afternoon the captain on the bridge swept the sea with his glasses, and saw no sign of a "blow." He glanced at the sinking sun and measured with his eye the 20 miles to the harbor. He dropped- his glasses and gave a quiet order that meant the day's work was done. The deck was put in order, and the stocky little whaler, with her trophies grappled elose to her side, set her bow towards the mainland. It was not for the want of "fish" that we had fisherman's luck that day. But the whaler was no larger than a tugboat. The heavy sea tossed her about like a cork, and aiming a cannon with so unsteady a base a* the whaler** bow was difficult business even for the expert captain. Three times he fired and missed; and as it took an hour or two to reload th* gun and harpoon and bomb, it was two o'clock in the afternoon before we got our *econd prize. The process was in all respects like the first; but there was the same frenzy of excitement aboard the ship. The one appetite that never becomes satiated, the one instinct that is never satisfied, the one experience that no amount of repetition dulls, is, it seems, the instinct to hunt and kill. In primitive man it was the first law of his being; and, like the whale's breathing, it stays with him in a wholly changed environment. The eaptain slowly paced the bridge and puffed a long cigar in profound content. I judged, by what he had told me, that his individual share in the day's catch would be a successful lawyer's income for a week.—Boston Transcript.

AeVrlce Wanted. Young Man—l came to ask you for the hand of your daughter, sir. Old Man (the father of seven) Which one of my daughters, young man? J "That's another thing I wanted to ask you. Now, as a friend, which one would you advise me to take?"— Chicago Daily News. Room in the Prone-salon. Clara—Dear Isabel, you are at last a successful artist. Isabel—Oh, Clara. I don't feel myself a success; I've just moved up a Httle. because a lot of nl<!%r strollers ave got tired and quit.—Detroit i'ret *'ress.