We were running at full speed toward the animal, which was spouting every ten or fifteen seconds. Andersen was forward superintending the loading of the gun and inspecting the harpoon rope which lay coiled on the heavy iron pan at the bow.
“He ... would sometimes swim just under the surface with only the tip of the dorsal fin exposed.”
“He’s a good whale,” the Gunner called out to me, and by that he meant that we would soon get a shot because the animal was spouting so frequently. He was never down longer than five minutes, and would sometimes swim just under the surface with only the tip of the dorsal fin exposed. At other times his course could be followed by patches of smooth, green water which spread out in a broad trail behind him.
The gun had hardly been loaded before we were close to the whale, with the engines at dead slow, waiting for him to come up. I had taken out one of the lenses of my camera but decided that the light was not yet strong enough for the use of the single combination since the shutter would have to be operated at a high speed. Sitting down upon a tool box near the rail, I began hurriedly to replace the back lens and was just screwing it into position when “who-o-o” came the spout, not five fathoms from the stern of the ship.
We all jumped as though a bomb had been exploded beside us and I nearly dropped the camera in my excitement. Somehow I managed to get the lens readjusted without accident, and stood ready with my arm around a rope just behind the gun platform. Before the ship swung about the whale had spouted two or three times and gone down. We hardly breathed while waiting and my nerves were so on edge that I almost released the shutter of the camera when the silence was broken by the voice of the Bo’s’n from the “top” singing out, “He’s coming, he’s coming!”
“I can’t see him!” shouted the Gunner.
“There, there, on the port bow!” came the answer from aloft.
With a rush the great animal burst to the surface, and I caught a glimpse of the spout in the mirror of my camera as it shot up in a white cloud, glittering in the sunlight.
“Will he shoot?” I thought. “No, no, it is too far,” and I pressed the button of the camera as the broad back came into view.