LIFE ON A SOUTH SEA WHALER. 823 



frolicsome fellows. A " block," or pulley, was hung out at the bow- 

 sprit end, a whale line passed through it and " bent " (fastened) on to 

 a harpoon. Another line with a running " bowline," or slip noose, 

 was also passed out to the bowsprit end, being held there by one man 

 in readiness. Then one of the harpooners ran out along the back 

 ropes, which keep the jib boom down, taking his stand beneath the 

 bowsprit with the harpoon ready. Presently he raised his iron and 

 followed the track of a rising porpoise with its point until the creature 

 broke water. At the same instant the weapon left his grasp, appar- 

 ently without any force behind it; but we on deck, holding the line, 

 soon found that our excited hauling lifted a big vibrating body clean 

 out of the smother beneath. " 'Vast hauling ! " shouted the mate, 

 while, as the porpoise hung dangling, the harpooner slipped the ready 

 bowline over his body, gently closing its grip round the " small " by 

 the broad tail. Then we hauled on the noose line, slacking away the 

 harpoon, and in a minute had our prize on deck. He was dragged 

 away at once and the operation repeated. Again and again we hauled 

 them in, until the fore part of the deck was alive with the kicking, 

 writhing sea pigs, at least twenty of them. All hands were soon busy 

 skinning the blubber from the bodies. Porpoises have no skin — that 

 is, hide — the blubber or coating of lard which incases them being cov- 

 ered by a black substance as thin as tissue paper. The porpoise hide of 

 the bootmaker is really leather, made from the skin of the Beluga, or 

 '* white whale," which is found only in the far north. The cover was 

 removed from the " try- works " amidships, revealing two gigantic pots 

 set in a frame of brickwork side by side, capable of holding two hun- 

 dred gallons each — such a cooking apparatus as might have graced a 

 Brobdingnagian kitchen. Beneath the pots was the very simplest of 

 furnaces, hardly as elaborate as the familiar copper hole sacred to 

 washing day. Square funnels of sheet iron were loosely fitted to the 

 flues, more as a protection against the oil boiling over into the fire than 

 to carry away the smoke, of which from the peculiar nature of the 

 fuel there was very little. At one side of the try-works was a large 

 wooden vessel, or " hopper," to contain the raw blubber; at the other, 

 a copper cistern or cooler of about three hundred gallons capacity, into 

 which the prepared oil was baled to cool off, preliminary to its being 

 poured into the casks. Beneath the furnaces was a space as large as 

 the whole area of the try-works, about a foot deep, which, when the 

 fires were lighted, was filled with water to prevent the deck from 

 burning. 



It may be imagined that the blubber from our twenty porpoises 

 made but a poor show in one of the pots; nevertheless, we got a barrel 

 of very excellent oil from them. The fires were fed with " scrap," or 

 pieces of blubber from which the oil had been boiled, some of which 



