158 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



ous solidity. On the crest of the shoulder, within ample shooting 

 range of the farthest opposite side of the sound, rose a fairly stout 

 fort adequately armed and manned; behind the center of the bay 

 stood a small white church of imposing but dignified simplicity. It 

 even had a bell. Most efficient of all, the sound was ice-free in the 

 summer and lacked a glacier at its head, so that safe navigation was 

 as far as possible assured at all times in that perilous group of is- 

 lands. 



Captain Peter Cornelius Vettewinkel leaned contentedly upon the 

 rail of his rather large ship and viewed the scene in the brilliant eve- 

 ning sunlight. One particular whale of the four he had so luckily 

 struck just when about to take advantage of an exceptionally favor- 

 able wind to run home empty-handed was now alongside the jetty, 

 and the shore crew, supervised by the captain's own speksnijer, 

 boatswain, and chief Basque harpooner, were already busily affixing 

 the tail lines. As the sun would set only for a few minutes, and the 

 light hardly fade at all throughout the whole night, there was no 

 need to become excited, yet, complacent Hollander even though he 

 was. Captain Vettewinkel could hardly wait for the quarry to be 

 hauled up the slipway to see what it looked like. 



Many times on quiet evenings during fine weather while in passage 

 to or from the whaling grounds, when sail was properly set to a 

 steady wind, the evening prayers had been disposed of, and pipes lit. 

 Captain Vettewinkel had listened with much more interest than he 

 had ever displayed to the information occasionally but so blandly 

 given by his old Basque harpooners about whales in general. They 

 had told how their forefathers, on reaching Newfoundland almost 

 two centuries before, had thought that the sardas, or noortkaperSy 

 they found there were different from those that visited their own 

 home shores. They had gone on to tell how one Tomas of Santander, 

 whose father had been half Portuguese, had one year chosen a course 

 far west of the normal whale run and north of Iceland and had taken 

 a vast whale, undoubtedly a sarda because of its general shape and 

 because it did not sink when killed, but nonetheless without any 

 "bonnet" and of completely different aspect, as his whole crew had 

 later testified. What is more, the whale had yielded a surfeit of fine 

 oil. The captain had always listened most intently when his har- 

 pooners had told of later Basque captains who had also taken this 



