It should not be inferred that the whale deliberately attacked the ship with the intention of disabling her. There is little doubt in my mind but that the animal was blindly rushing forward in his death flurry, and the fact that he struck the vessel was pure accident. Nevertheless, the results would have been none the less serious if he had hit her squarely.
“I was ... gazing down into the blue water and waiting to catch a glimpse of the body as it rose, when suddenly a dark shape glided swiftly under the ship’s bow.”
After a hasty examination showed that the propeller was uninjured, the whale was hauled to the surface. I was standing on the gun platform gazing down into the blue water and waiting to catch a glimpse of the body as it rose, when suddenly a dark shape glided swiftly under the ship’s bow. At first I thought it was only imagination, an aftereffect of the excitement, but another followed, then another, and soon from every side specter-like forms were darting swiftly and silently here and there, sometimes showing a flash of white as one turned on its side.
They were giant sharks drawn by the floating carcass as steel is drawn by a magnet. Like the vultures which wheel and circle in the western sky far beyond the reach of human sight, watching for the death of some poor, thirst-smitten, desert brute, so these vultures of the sea quickly gathered about the dead whale. I watched them silently fasten to the animal’s side, tearing away great cup-shaped chunks of blubber, and shivered as I thought of what would happen to a man if he fell overboard among these horrible, white-eyed sea-ghosts.
Within three minutes of the time when the whale had been drawn to the surface over twenty sharks, each one accompanied by its little striped pilot fish swimming just behind its fins, were biting at the carcass.
“Dame, dame, they’ll eat my whale up,” shouted Andersen in Japanese. “Bo’s’n, bring the small harpoon.”
“Two boat hooks were jabbed into the shark’s gills and it was hauled along the ship’s side until it could be pulled on deck.”
One big shark, the most persistent of the school, had sunk his teeth in the whale’s side and, although half out of water, was tearing away at the blubber and paying not the slightest attention to the pieces of old iron which the sailors were showering upon him. When the harpoon was rigged and the line made fast, Andersen climbed out upon the rope-pan in front of the gun and jammed the iron into the shark’s back. Even then the brute waited to snatch one more mouthful before it slid off the carcass into the water. It struggled but little and seemed more interested in returning to its meal than in freeing itself from the harpoon, but two boat hooks were jabbed into its gills and it was hauled along the ship’s side until it could be pulled on deck. This was no easy task, for it must have weighed at least two hundred pounds and began a tremendous lashing with its tail when the crew hauled away. “Ya-ra-cu-ra-sa,” sang the sailors, each time giving a heave as the word “sa” was uttered, and the shark was soon flapping and pounding about on deck. The seamen prodded it with boat hooks and belaying pins and I must confess that I had little sympathy for the brute when the blood poured out of its mouth and gills, turning the snow-white breast to crimson. I paced its length as it lay on the deck, taking good care to miss the thrashing tail and the vicious snaps of its crescent-shaped jaws. It measured just twelve feet and, although a big one, was by no means the largest of the school.