Commencing to cut strips of the blubber with a flensing knife. The blubber is being pulled away as the man cuts by a chain and steam winch.
The writer and the skipper were discussing the colours of the sea; Henriksen, unlike the average whaler, does not despise things æsthetic; on the contrary, he takes delighted interest in Nature’s picture-book. As we painted, and discussed how to get this effect, and the other, there came from the crow’s nest the welcome cry of “A blast!” and the response from the bridge: “How far?” We were bowling south with a blustering, following wind, really too rough for whaling, for the sea made us yaw this way and that. However, there was no choice; there was half-a-chance and it was not to be missed. It did not turn out to be a long chase; it was a solitary finner and we swung after his first blow a mile to port and at his third blow were within a quarter of a mile. Then he sounded, and in twenty minutes came up again and blew a twenty-foot blast of steam into the bright windy air. Again we pursued and were nearly in shot at his second blast, and were following him north against the sea with the foam coming splendidly over us at every dive, making one fairly gasp with excitement and cold, but feet and legs held good; they shake a little, we notice, whilst we look on at another gunner. We were all wrong at the third rise; a mile out and very disappointed, then, to our astonishment, three minutes after appeared a blast to leeward, and the huge, plum-coloured shoulders of a leviathan coming right across our course—the same whale or another we could not tell. A turn of the engine then “Saghte” (Slowly), and we surged ahead, rising and falling on the far too big waves. Then a strange and rare sight came; owing to the position of the sun, the light shone right into the banks of waves, and inside one and along it, we obtained a splendid full-length view of the whale under the greeny water looking almost yellow and white. We have only on very few occasions obtained such a complete view of a whale, when looking down on one, but in this case, it was a complete side view. Up we rose in a thirty-foot surge, and the top of his dark shiny head appeared, up rushed the blast, and over went his enormous back. How we wished it was higher out of the water. As we plunged down a wave its back showed at its highest, and we pulled the trigger, aiming almost uphill as we plunged our bows under. It was a longer shot than usual, about forty yards and in rougher weather, and the harpoon plunged in at the centre of the target! What a boom and whirl of rope and smoke, and what a glorious moment of suspense and then intense satisfaction when the great line tautened up and began to run—some excuse for a wave of the cap.
Harpooning a Whale
But wait...! What is this? the line is suddenly slack. There was no miss—what has happened we cannot tell. All we can do is to wind up—we have lost him, somehow or other!
I know men who feel almost relieved at missing a whale, for they say they have had the hunt, which is better than the actual harpooning, and after-play, and so I have heard some salmon-fishers talk, who say they hook their salmon, then hand the rod to their gillie. Not so with the writer; one part of whaling or fishing is as good as the other to me, and to harpoon your whale and lose it is too distressing for words.
At last the harpoon comes on board—the flanges have never opened!—there is flesh on them, and a foot up the shaft—two and a half feet it had entered, and yet came out! possibly the marlin round the flanges was too strong to allow of them spreading. Possibly the explosive point made too great a hole and allowed the flashes to miss their anchoring hold. It was bad luck for us and for the whale. Our leviathan disappeared and we wound up, very melancholy.[5] A slight consolation was that a neighbouring whaler was seen to fire at another whale; we heard the boom and saw the smoke, and nothing more—she had made a clean miss! probably owing to the roughness of the sea.
View of Whale under Water