“For ten minutes the silence continued, then the Captain said in a quiet voice: ‘There he is, far away on the beam!’”
Twice a shot seemed imminent but each time the animal refused to take the last short dive which would have brought it within range. At 9 o’clock Captain Olsen ran to the cabin for a cup of coffee and to change his wet clothes, for he had neglected to put on oilskins before going on deck. He had only been below ten minutes when the whale appeared not far away and Olsen hurried forward, pulling on his coat as he ran. Again the whale rose, about thirty fathoms from the ship and just out of range.
Olsen called to me:
“Get ready; he’ll come close next time.”
Suddenly a cloud of white vapor shot into our very faces and a great dripping body rounded out under the ship’s bow. The click of the camera was followed by the deafening roar of the gun; then there was a moment’s stillness as the giant figure quivered, straightened out, righted itself, and with a crashing blow of the flukes swung about and dashed away, tearing through the water partly on the surface, partly below it.
The cry of “Banzai!” which rose from the sailors was drowned in the shrieking of the winch and the pounding of the line on the deck as fathom after fathom was dragged over the iron wheels.
Through the cloud of smoke I could see the Engineer putting all his strength upon the brake and heard him shout for water to wet the burning wood. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred fathoms were dragged out when suddenly the rush ceased and the ship lay still, quietly rolling in the swell. The whale had sounded, and the rope hung straight down from the bow as rigid as a bar of steel.
Fifteen minutes we waited and there was no sign from below. Olsen began to get uneasy and to stamp upon the line, hoping to stir the great animal which was sulking on the bottom.
“I don’t want him to die down there,” he said, “for I’m afraid of this line. The starboard rope is all right but this one is weak. If he doesn’t come topsides to blow so I can get in another harpoon, we may break the line in heaving him up. He’s down a long way and the strain will be awful.”
After twenty minutes the rope began slowly to come in, and I went forward with the Captain to the gun platform, waiting for the whale to spout. We saw it at last, but so far away that I thought it was a different animal. The engines had been stopped when the whale was down but now the ship began to move. Faster and faster the vessel tore through the water until Olsen ordered half speed astern.