WHALE HUNTING

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 440, 22 September 1904, Page 8

WHALE HUNTING

STJULIVAK.

BE was a Norwegian, but hia sea English was as good as the king's. was big and muscular, with a ram combination of weight and wiriaess. Bis face and ejss were stem enough ■when be shouted orders from the bridge, but, when playing the host in his cabin, as merry as a Santa Clausewithout the whiskers. His skin was tanned by the salt tp ray and burned by the sun of every degree of latitude where ships have erer been. He had caught whales in every sea, from the Persian gulf to Baffin's bay; and a fsw years ago he abandoned the old way cf New Bedford and ell romance—the three-year-long, round - the - world •raise in a sailing vessel—to try the adaptation of steam to whaling. For the big brick oven on the deck to boil the blubber (which all remember who know The Cruise of the Cachalot) he substituted a permanent factory for refining the oil, located on the northern shore of Newfoundland. From this he steamed out to the whaling grounds each morning and back at night, rarely with out a prize. For the old method of throwing a harpoon by hand- from a •mall boat he substituted a harpoon gun from the bow of his whaler; and with these improvements conducted a business that will soon make the law surviving New Bedford sailing whalers as obsolete as wooden plows. I lay in his spare bunk, across the narrow cabin from his own, and dropped to sleep a* he finished a tale, strangely like Kipling's "Three Sealers," of a fight between rival crews for 8 ' =ad whale in the Okhotak sea. On!y -. minute later, it seemed, I bumped tvy head against the top of the bunk * n the quick awakening of an excited Norwegian craft cry from the top of the companionway. Thecaptaki leaped from his bunk. He waited not for c hoes nor for other clothes than those he selpt in, but bounded up the steps, shouting orders as he ran. While I crewed I could feel the quick stopping, the short advances and retreats of the engines, and I knew we were stalking game. When I reached the deck the captain had one hand on the gun, swinging 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.Att looked like a huge, cigar-shaped piece of smoo'th, shiny- slate-colored India rubber, rising at regular intervals so that four or five feet of his diameter and 40 feet of his length showed like a mound on the smooth water. With alternate rising and dipping he was gliding smoothly forward, without apparent exertion, bat with tremendous speed, and in a perfectly straight line. We were approaching him from behind at an angle. *-o that his course and ours were the fides of a V. The captain "v the raised- platform i in the bow, "oil i wing with the mouth of his cannon the coarse of the whale, was the personification of alertness. The crew were grouped behind him as eager and expectant as if they had never caught a whale before. One of them touched me on the shoulder and pointed silently a mile away, where a doren other whales were spouting fine columns of vapor. When I turns-> 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 atr.f e of tiptoe- alertness. Suddenly cam the crash of the gun. Isawahid«f>u> red zigzag gash on the broad side of the whale; I heard the rambling 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 leapingtotheir posts. Suddenly I felt the bow of the Teasel give a jerk beneath me. then; tremble a moment, and slowly dip. m j The whale had gene straight down-*' ward. The rope attached to the harl _>on shot over the bow so fast that the «"ve could not follow; where itto»** tV<* wood a curling coram© *■*" - 11 ®** rrose. The windlass in*- ■»* 6moVe - boy's top. It fc*" n rolllld hk * -. ith the nolisv' imed and buzzed Toil '°f a nyinsr locomotive, jngo*'' oil of rone leaped into noth- .** \* like a msrri-Man's f over pot* radually the windlass ceased to spin. The whale had touched bottom. Th*

...ptah. signaled to back the ship, lest .':e aiicuiu r< use upafoul of theproptl!er. The rope floated slack on tht* water. There waa a minute or two of silent,expectantsuspe nee. Then,liglr. in front of thebow.so closelcouldfcr.vc poked my finger agains'f he flabh\ blubber, up rose the giant nose—up, up. up till he towered 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 feet and slapped the water witih a noise like a thunderclap at our very toes. 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 alack rope with a jerk that shook the ship from stem to atern. There waa an instant tug of war between tha whale and the reversed engines. Then the whale won and for a minute pulled the vessel forward with him. Again, the windlass whirred and whizzed, but with diminishing speed. Far out at lie end of his two miles of rope, the whale churned and lashed tie water and blew big blasts of hot vapor. The crew sawuhe end and relaxed their tenseness. They gave him half an hour or so to end his convulsions. Then the captain shouted the order to wind in the rope. As the whsle felt the pull he gave one feeble, dying jump. The men stopped a minute, then continued slowly to pull in. Finally, the huge.winert, flabby body floated belly upward, just off the bow. They lowered s boat, passed a chain about the narrow circumference where the teil widens, and. grappled him to the side of the vessel. I could see a dozen quarreling porpoises eatbig 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 prise. The crew busied themselves with loading the harpoon gun again and putting things in order.

I All this was before five in the xnornmd—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 feesh," he said; and went aloft ; to his bridge to watch with his glass- | ea for another "blow." With the wind . came rain, and the two did, indeed, ■ make bad fishing. Not that the whales went in out of the wet, as an irreverent sailor most .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 for them, they j would swim right past us with all tf-e dignity of an ocean liner speeding oast a bobbing fishing craft. They never seemed to be merely browsing idly around!—they were always swimming in a straight Hue, and always very fast, ae 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 regular intervals. Farther 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 hie 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 wf*>i his eye the 20 miles to the harbor, 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 close to her side, set her bow towarde 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 I tossed her about like a eork, and aiming a cannon with so unsteady a base as the whaler's bow ww» difficult business even for the expert captain. Three times he fired and missed; and as it took an hour or two to reload the gun and prepare the harpoon and bomb, it was two o'clock in the after- ; noon before we got our second prize. The process was in all respects like the irst; but there was the same frenzy of ' 'xcHement aboard the ship. The one -tppetite that never becomes satiated, the one instinct that is never 'he one experience that no amount of enetitlon dulls, is, it seems, the instinct to hunt and kill. In primitive nan it was the first law of his being; ■'nd, like the whale's breathing, i% stays with him fc a wholly A environment. The eaptain slowlv paced the* _.,_., and puffed a long ci«?ar m y ro 3 1 ffr* * "-Vai he had he day's catch woul; d b e a * week-Boston AiTleeVygmtes. Young Man—l c/ ire to ask vou for the hand of your dnu-hter, sir. Old Man (the father of seven)— Which one of oij daughters, youn<? man?"That's another thing I wanted to a *k you. Nov* ,as a friend, which one you advise me to take?"— Chicago Daily News. Room In (lie Proeeaaton. Clara —Dear Isabel, you are at last a successful artist. £ Isabel—Oh, Clara. I don't feel rry>rlf a success; I've '■■■•st moved :ip n "i! lie. because a lot*:;/ • '..-:»r -»;-•• : . ■.!■?.■ • e got tired ami ' •'■■— Detroit ere. rress. f