We chased it for hours; there is no good in chasing one and then rushing off to the next that appears; by a fluke you might strike across the stranger’s course and get him on the rise, but the best plan is to study the movements of the whale of your choice, and by judiciously following it learn its movements so as to cut across its course and get in your harpoon at the right time.
It is difficult to describe the intense excitement of chasing whales, and the more so when your interest in it is even more than the hunting—when you have shares to make profit on, for friends interested in the bag.
At about seven-thirty we saw the whales, and by nine we had been three times almost within harpooning distance, say within forty yards, when always the whale “tailed up,” and took his final dive. A whale comes to the surface, blows and takes in breath, several times, just going below surface between each blast. After it feels refreshed it goes below on its business for a dive of, say, twenty minutes or half-an-hour, and may appear any distance from the spot it went down at. In this last dive it raises the after part of its body with a slow elevation, a sort of sad farewell to the hunter. Certain whales, such as the sperm and narwhal, and Right whales, lift the whole tail out, but others, such as the finners we hunt off Shetland, only show the ridge in front of the tail; and seldom show their tails or flukes until they are harpooned.
One thing that comforted us greatly was that we knew from this whale’s movements that though he avoided our treading on his heels, as it were, he was never scared or gallied by our engine or propeller’s beat.
It would take volumes to describe the different ways of each kind of whale. The sperm whale usually feeds in something of a circle, so you keep cruising round the inside of the circle.
For hours we chased, very seldom speaking, eating brown bread, and drinking coffee, standing on deck, sticking to the neighbourhood of our first acquaintance, balancing the prospects of our expedition’s failure or success on the way this one whale took our approach. Sceptics had told us the beat of our motor would frighten a whale more than the slower revolving screw of the steam-whaler; we play our one card that it will not, so to-day our anxiety can be understood.
Cutting with a Spade into the Case or Head of a Cachalot Whale
