A Year with a Whaler

by Walter Noble Burns

Mr. Winchester again lowered, with Gabriel's boat to back him up. The chase was short and swift. The boats began to overhaul the bear as it approached the ice, the mate's bullets splashing all about the animal, but doing no damage. As the brute was hauling itself upon the ice, a ball crashed into its back, breaking its spine. It fell back into the water and expired in a furious flurry. A running bowline having been slipped over its neck, it was towed back to the brig.

Not long afterward, while we were cruising in open water, a polar bear swam across the brig's stern. There was neither ice nor land in sight. Figuring the ship's deck as the center of a circle of vision about ten miles in diameter, the bear already had swum five miles, and probably quite a bit more, and it is certain he had an equal distance to go before finding any ice on which to rest. It probably had drifted south on an ice pan and was bound back for its home on the polar pack.

The bear made too tempting a target for the mate to resist, and he brought out his rifle and, kneeling on the quarter-deck, he took steady aim and fired. His bullet struck about two feet behind the animal. He aimed again, but changed his mind and lowered his gun.

"No," he said, "that fellow's making too fine a swim. I'll let him go."

Cleaving the water with a powerful stroke, the bear went streaking out of sight over the horizon. It is safe to say that before its swim ended the animal covered fifteen miles at the lowest estimate, and possibly a much greater distance.

One moonlight night a little later, while we were traveling under short sail with considerable ice about, a whale blew a short distance to windward. I was at the wheel and Mr. Landers was standing near me. "Blow!" breathed Mr. Landers softly. Suddenly the whale breached—we could hear it distinctly as it shot up from a narrow channel between ice floes. "There she breaches!" said Mr. Landers in the same low voice, with no particular concern. We thought the big creature merely was enjoying a moonlight frolic. It breached again. This time its body crashed upon a strip of ice and flopped and floundered for a moment before sliding back into the water. Then it breached half a dozen times more in rapid succession. I had never seen a whale breach more than once at a time, even when wounded. Mr. Landers became interested. "I wonder what's the matter with that whale," he said.

To our surprise, two other black bodies began to flash up into the moonlight about the whale. Every time the whale breached, they breached, too. They were of huge size, but nothing like so large as the whale.

"Killers!" cried Mr. Landers excitedly.

Then we knew the whale was not playing, but fighting for its life. It leaped above the surface to a lesser and lesser height each time. Plainly it was tiring fast. When it breached the last time only its head and a small portion of its body rose into the air and both killers seemed to be hanging with a bulldog grip upon its lower jaw. What the outcome of that desperate battle was we did not see. The whale and its savage assailants moved off out of eye-shot. But for some time after we had lost sight of the whale we could hear its labored and stertoreous breathing and its heavy splashes as it attempted to breach.