In the meantime, while Colin had been telling the story of the adventure with the gray whale, and the captain had been bemoaning the decay of the whaling industry, the work of bringing the dead whale to the surface had been under way. Letting out more slack on the rope attached to the harpoon a bight of it was passed through a sheave-block at the masthead, thus giving a greater purchase for the lifting of the heavy body. The winch was run by a small donkey-engine, and for about ten minutes the line was hauled in, fathom after fathom being coiled on the deck. Presently, as Colin looked over the rail, the dark body of the
whale was seen coming to the surface, and as he was hauled alongside a chain was thrown around his flukes, and the body was made fast to the vessel, tail foremost.
Just as soon as the whale was secured a sailor jumped on the body, carrying with him a long steel tube, pierced with a number of holes for several inches from the bottom. To this he attached a long rubber tube, while the other end was connected with a small air-pump. The ever-handy donkey-engine was used to work the pump, and the body of the whale was slowly filled with air in the same way that a bicycle tire is inflated.
"What's that for?" asked Colin, who had been watching the process with much curiosity.
"So that he will float," the captain answered. "You can't tow a whale that's lying on the bottom!"
"But I thought you were going to cut him up!"
"And boil down the blubber on board?"
"Yes."
"That's very seldom done now," the captain explained. "In the old days, when whaling-ships went on three and four year voyages they 'fleshed' the blubber at sea and boiled it down or 'tried it out,' as they called it, into oil. They al
ways carried a cooper along, too, and made their own barrels, so that after a long voyage a ship would come back with her hold full of barrels of whale-oil."