A series of violent storms which kept the ships inside had been raging along the coast, but at last the clouds began to break one evening and gather into great fleecy mountains of white, now and then drifting away enough to show the moon behind. The bad weather had apparently ended and at ten o’clock I went aboard the Hogei Maru No. 5 as the guest of Captain Y. E. Andersen.
The whaling station at Aikawa, North Japan. “Aikawa is a typical little fishing village, situated at the end of a beautiful bay which sometimes harbors as many as fourteen whale ships from the four neighboring stations.”
A streak of brilliant sunshine playing across my face from the skylight awakened me at five o’clock in the morning. The ship was rolling along in a moderate swell, but the patch of sky which shone through the open square above my head was as blue as the waters of a tropic sea. Captain Andersen was still asleep, and I had just decided to dress and go on deck when the cabin boy ran hurriedly down the companionway and called “Kujira” (whale). In five minutes we were both on deck, and upon reaching the bridge I said to the man at the wheel, “Kore wa nani desu ka?” (What kind is it?)
A sei whale on the slip at Aikawa. This species is allied to the finback but is smaller.
He replied in Japanese: “I don’t know yet; sperm, I think.”
The spout of a sei whale. The column of vapor shoots straight upward and is lower and less dense than that of the finback.
I was tremendously excited at this for I wished above all things to get at close quarters with a school of sperm whales, which, off this coast, often numbers several hundred individuals. I strained my eyes through a powerful field glass, sweeping the sea ahead to catch sight of a spout which would tell the story. Suddenly it came, about a mile ahead, and we both exclaimed, “Iwashi kujira!” (Sardine whale!) for the column of vapor shooting straight upward and drifting slowly off on the wind was strikingly different from the puff-like blow of the sperm.