I ran below to get the cinematograph and tripod and set it on the bridge while the gun was being loaded. The winch was then started and the whale drawn slowly toward the ship. He persisted in keeping in the sunlight, which drew a path of glittering, dancing points of light, beautiful to see but fatal to pictures. I shouted to Captain Andersen, asking him to wait a bit and let the whale go down, hoping it would rise in the other direction. He did so and the animal swung around, coming up just as I wished, so that the sun was almost behind us. It was now near enough to begin work and I kept the crank of the machine steadily revolving whenever it rose to spout. The whale was drawn in close under the bow and for several minutes lay straining and heaving, trying to free himself from the biting iron.
“Stand by! I’m going to shoot now,” sang out the Gunner, and in a moment he was hidden from sight in a thick black cloud.
The beautiful gray body was lying quietly at the surface when the smoke drifted away, but in a few seconds the whale righted himself with a convulsive heave. The poor animal was not yet dead, though the harpoon had gone entirely through him. Captain Andersen called for one of the long slender lances which were triced up to the ship’s rigging, and after a few more turns of the winch had brought the whale right under the bows, he began jabbing the steel into its side, throwing his whole weight on the lance. The whale was pretty “sick” and did not last long, and before the roll of motion-picture film had been exhausted it sank straight down, the last feeble blow leaving a train of round white bubbles on the surface.
A sei whale at Aikawa, Japan. This species is about forty-eight feet long and is allied to the finback and blue whales.
Andersen and I went below for breakfast and by the time we were on deck again the whale had been inflated and was floating easily beside the ship. When we had reached the bridge the Gunner said:
“I don’t want to go in yet with this one; we’ll cruise about until twelve o’clock and see if we can’t find another. I am going up in the top and then we’ll be sure not to miss any.”
I stretched out upon a seat on the port side of the bridge and lazily watched the water boil and foam ver the dead whale as we steamed along at full speed. Captain Andersen was singing softly to himself, apparently perfectly happy in his lofty seat. So we went about for two hours and I was almost asleep when Andersen called down:
“There’s a whale dead ahead. He spouted six times.”
