Five minutes the whale stays down, then comes up to starboard. “How many were there?” says Jensen to the look-out in the crow’s nest. “Two big and a calf.” Eight minutes they stay down and appear half-a-mile to starboard; there is the lovely silence of a sailing-ship as we wait with the engines stopped, studying fleecy clouds and the silky blue stripe our track has left on the swell. It is this rapid contrast that gives the charm to whaling—this morning, in hail and black-eyed sea, a blurred sea and landscape of beaten cliffs and capes; this afternoon a wide horizon, and not a ship in sight, the colour and width of it! But here he is! He came up half-a-mile to port—appeared two or three times, at a few seconds’ interval, then “tailed up,” that slow, farewell turn over of the after part of the body as it goes down for a deep dive; and we follow its general direction. In ten minutes he appears a mile to N.W. It is four o’clock, the air S.W. and cold, and bright enough to be N.E.
“Saghte!” (Norse for softly, slowly), he ought to be up soon.... 4.3 P.M. There he is half-a-mile to east—we hear the blast. These North-Atlantic whales don’t make half such a resonant loud blast as the Antarctic whales ... another whale blowing to E. by S.... Four-twelve. Within two hundred yards, a little to port—we follow, a stern chase—note blue sky reflected on wet plum-coloured back ... within fifty yards when he made his last dive, Jensen had the gun swung ... separate whale appears to the right—very large ... nearly fired. Four-twenty. Behind, to port, we swing round—we are lacing the rippling swell with blue silky bands—“Lord!” there it is! at the second rise under our bow—BANG!
A splendid shot!—away goes the line at seventy miles the hour and we are hauled quickly round, and are taken in tow eight miles an hour and the engines going eight miles astern, if that is not exhilarating!
Jensen wipes his nose on red handkerchief—the cook and engineer are at the winch brakes—there is a thin furrow of Union Jack colours, red blood, white foam in the blue of ocean—and the line still whirling out at intervals. We “fish fine,” the casting line is sixty fathoms, the rope four and a half inches in circumference, the finest Italian hemp procurable, with a backing of two thousand one hundred and sixty-six feet, five-and-half inches rope to port, and the same to starboard, a total of eight thousand six hundred and twenty feet. The line passes five times round the two barrels of a sixty-five horse-power winch. It is “fine tackle” compared to the seventy or eighty ton fighting finner that we are playing.... 4.25—not much line out, only about one thousand five hundred feet—now we go more slowly in tow.—It was a well-placed shot ... a few Mother Carey chickens come and some fulmar petrels, later a solan goose!—there is a little blood now in its feeble blast, it thrashes with its tail—more line going out—we go astern to drown it. The nose appears, exactly the colour of a salmon at a distance—it turns over. 4.33—White ribbed underside up—now it is dead and it sinks. The line is rove over large iron snatch block[7] up the mast and the steam winch begins to turn slowly, raising the whale from the depths; a slow, steady, funereal clank; a great chain is manœuvred round the tail and it is hauled up to the side of the bow by the winch; getting the tail chained up to the bow is a complicated, heavy bit of seaman’s work. A magnificent and beautiful thing is the tail in colour and form; so wide and big and yet so delicate in design and finish and plum-like colour and so immensely strong. The body swings alongside, the head reaches our stern quarters, the line is cut clear of the harpoons in its body. 4.55—Two hours after we first sighted the whale, a quick hunt, play, and kill. 5.3—Blowing it up and off for second whale.
Blowing up, as already described, is putting a hollow lance into whale and blowing through it air and steam, which makes the body slightly more buoyant and more easy to tow.
5.30—Sight another whale. Meantime Jensen has been cleaning out the whale gun on the bows with tow and cleaning rod and the charge is put in, and the india-rubber wad driven home on top of three hundred and eighty-five grammes of black powder. The second line from the port side of the hold is made ready, and a new harpoon, one and a half hundredweights, slung from the hold. The line is spliced to the twisted wire grummet or ring that travels in a slot in the shaft of the harpoon, which is rammed into the gun so that line and ring hang from the shaft at the muzzle of the gun. Getting this done and putting chains and ropes in order takes time and a considerable amount of work for five men, and meanwhile we on the bridge are conscious, as we roll, of occasional whiffs from the galley of roast whale steak and onions. For merit I place caribou meat first, whale and black bear about equal, in second place, and beef third.
Five-forty-five. We have screwed on the explosive point to the harpoon (over the time fuse), swung round the gun, and are off in pursuit of the whale we sighted at five-thirty. By six-thirty he has appeared several times, made two or three handsome blasts and gone down “tail up,” and we followed, as we thought, in the direction he took, but he always appeared right off our track. I use the term “tail up” not quite accurately here; the expression really means the whole tail going into air as the whale goes down for a long dive. In the case of these northern finners it is generally only the part of the back next to the tail that is raised, not the flukes, and this rising tells you the whale intends to go down deep for twenty minutes or half-an-hour. “A wrong vone,” the engineer says—“he be chased before.” You see the engineer, when his mate is below, joins in the sport of watching, ahead, to port, to starboard and astern, and works the winch when we are playing the fish; always there is work for all, and little enough time for meals, if any.
Whilst we roll about in the swell waiting for the leviathan to make our closer acquaintance, I may relate some of the thrilling dangers with which the track of the modern whaler is beset. Novel, unfamiliar dangers must always make interesting reading when people are tired of hearing of the risks we all run at any crossing as pedestrians or motorists.
