Then Captain Solomon came on deck, and he offered a prize of half a pound of tobacco to the best harpooner. And the men cheered when they heard him, and they took the harpoons and ran forward.

They hurried and fastened a rather small rope on to each harpoon, in the way a rope ought to be fastened to a harpoon, and two of the sailors took the two harpoons and went down under the bowsprit, in among the chains that go from the end of the bowsprit to the stem of the ship. They went there so as to be near the water. They might get wet there, but they didn't care about that. And the other end of the rope, that was fastened to each harpoon, was made fast up on deck, so that the harpoon shouldn't be lost if it wasn't stuck into a porpoise, and so that the porpoise shouldn't get away if it was stuck into him.

One of the sailors was so excited that he didn't hit anything with his harpoon, and the sailors up on deck hauled it in. The other sailor managed to hit a porpoise, but he was excited, too, and the harpoon didn't go in the right place. When the sailors up on deck tried to haul the porpoise in, it broke away, and went swimming off.

Then those sailors came back on deck and two others took their places. One of those others had been harpooner on a whaleship before he went on the Industry. He didn't get excited at harpooning a porpoise, but drove his harpoon in at just exactly the right place, and the sailors up on deck hauled that porpoise in. Afterwards, that sailor got the half pound of tobacco that Captain Solomon had offered as a prize, because he harpooned his porpoise just exactly the right way.

The sailor that went with him struck a porpoise, too, but it wasn't quite in the right place, and the men had hard work to get him.

And then other sailors came and tried, and they took turns until they had more porpoises on deck than you would have thought that they could possibly use.

And all the men had porpoise steak for breakfast that morning and porpoise steak for dinner, and porpoise steak for supper. Sailors call porpoises "puffing pigs," and porpoise steak tastes something like pork steak, and sailors like it. But they had it for every meal until there was only one porpoise left, and that one they had to throw overboard.

And that's all.

"THEY HAD MORE PORPOISES ON DECK THAN YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT THEY COULD POSSIBLY USE"