Making the sei whale fast to the bow of the ship.
When the whale had been finally made fast and the ship started, the shark, now half dead, was pushed over the side. It had not gone ten feet astern before the others of the pack were tearing away at their unfortunate brother with as great good will as they had attacked our whale.
Andersen and I went below to an excellent tiffin, for which I had a better appetite than at breakfast, as the sea had subsided. The course was set for the station to get coal and water for the next day’s run, but we could not be in before seven or eight o’clock. The gunner lay down in the cabin for a short nap, and after lighting my pipe I went “top sides” to the bridge. I had been there not more than ten minutes, when “puf-f-f” went a sei whale about two hundred fathoms away on the starboard beam.
A sei whale swimming directly away from the ship. The nostrils or blowholes are widely expanded and greatly protruded.
The air pumps were still at work inflating the carcass alongside, and the gun had not yet been loaded. Captain Andersen ran forward with the powder charge sewed up in its neat little sack of cheesecloth; and after the Bo’s’n had rammed it home, wadded the gun, and inserted the harpoon, we were ready for work. The vessel had been taking a long circle about the whale, which was blowing every few seconds, and now we headed straight for it.
Like the last one, this animal was pursuing a school of sardines and proved easy to approach. Andersen fired at about fifteen fathoms, getting fast but not killing at once, and a second harpoon was sent crashing into the beautiful gray body which before many hours would fill several hundred cans and be sold in the markets at Osaka. The sharks again gathered about the ship when the whale was raised to the surface, but this time none was harpooned as we were anxious to start for the station.
It was nearly three o’clock when the ship was on her course and fully six before we caught a glimpse of the summit of Kinka-San, still twenty miles away. A light fog had begun to gather, and in the west filmy clouds draped themselves in a mantle of red and gold about the sun. Ere the first stars appeared, the wind freshened again and the clouds had gathered into puffy balls edged with black, which scudded across the sky and settled into a leaden mass on the horizon. It was evident that the good weather had ended and that we were going to run inside just in time to escape a storm.