The harpoon blade is made like an arrow, but with only one barb, which turns on a steel pivot. The point of the harpoon blade is ground as sharp as a razor on one side and blunt on the other. The shaft is about thirty inches long and made of the best soft iron so that it is practically impossible to break it. Three irons were always placed in our boat, fitted one above the other in the starboard bow. If the harpooner missed with one iron, or if there was time to fling a second, he could reach and get it handily.
In the old days the lances were slung in the port bow. It was with the lance the whale was actually killed. The harpoon only serves to make the boat fast to its prize. The lances were slender spears about four feet long with broad points. The old-time whalemen were rowed right up to the side of the ironed monster, after it had tired itself out fighting, and the officer in the bow had to churn the lance up and down in the great beast until the point reached a vital spot.
For this reason there were many more serious accidents in the old times than now. In each boat belonging to the Scarboro there was stowed a lance-gun in place of the lances. The bomb-lance is surer than the old-time lance, and keeps the boat and crew farther from the seat of peril.
I rose up as soon as we drove in near the big bull that we had been approaching. And it was a big fellow! I think it was as large a sperm as we had seen. Its upper jaw and head was covered with lumps and scars of old wounds. Along the flank was a half-healed, jagged gash, too.
“That old boy’s collided with something,” grumbled Tom Anderly in my ear. “I believe he’s a rogue.”
I had heard of ancient, isolated he-elephants being called “rogue;” but I did not know before that whalemen believe that certain old bull whales are just as savage and revengeful as tigers. Indeed, among all wild creatures—either on land or in the sea—there seem to be ancient bulls that go off from their kind and sulk. They easily “run amuck”—perhaps are really insane. To attack them is far more perilous than to attack a herd of their normal fellows.
This old bull whale, however, had not deserted the society of his fellows; but he proved to be as ugly a customer as we could have found in all that school of three hundred or more sperms!
“He looks bad to me,” whispered Tom Anderly. “He’s a fighter. He’s probably smashed more boats in his time than the old hooker carries when she’s nested up full. Gosh! look at the warts on him.”
“And that gash in his side,” said Ben. “How do you suppose that happened?”
“Looks just like he’d rubbed against a copper keel,” declared the old man.