l6o FOLLOW THE WHALE 



pass while the great capstans scream and more and more interested 

 Smeerenburg spectators gather around to watch. 



But as the dead whale slowly moves up the slipway, both the 

 crowd and the captain are increasingly overcome by a sense of dis- 

 appointment verging on annoyance. This does not seem to be an 

 extraordinary whale, even if it does not have a "bonnet" and does 

 have white patches on its belly. The Basques, however, only look 

 grimmer and more determined and some of them start throwing 

 taunts and curses — or so it seems — in their own impossible language 

 at the crowd, who call back and jeer. It is, in fact, only after almost 

 two hours of hard labor, and not until the capstan gangs have been 

 relieved twice, that a casual onlooker in a small skiff anchored near 

 the end of the slipway calls out in Hollandsche, ''Maar, het, heeft 

 een nekr (But, it has a neck!) and the crowd mills forward down 

 the beach to peer. 



And, by Jinkoa, it does at first sight appear to have a "neck," be- 

 cause the head is so great, the top of it bowed upwards into a 

 pointed hump, and the lower jaws are so spread out that it looks as 

 if the head of a veritable monster had grown on the body of an 

 ordinary noortkaper, or black right whale. What is more, when the 

 points of the jaws appear, it is plain for all to see that in place of a 

 "bonnet" there are a number of stiff, white bristles sprinkled over 

 the tip of the snout and the end of the lower jaw. There is much 

 white about the flabby, bulging belly of this whale, and the whole 

 lower jaw is pale, silvery gray. Then the chief Basque points out 

 to the assembled crowd that the flippers are longer and wider at the 

 base than those of any whale they have seen. 



While those on shore mill around, preparing the corpse for cut- 

 ting-in, stoking the try-works, or just idly probing the beast, the 

 chief Basque and the boatswain row back to the ship and hail the 

 captain, inviting him to come and inspect the whale. And almost 

 without hesitation — and somewhat to their amusement — Captain 

 Vettewinkel accedes to their request and climbs down into the skiff. 

 Arrived at the jetty, he approaches the sHpway with all the casual- 

 ness he can muster and permits his harpooner to point out to him 

 the points whereby the sardako baleak differs from the sarda. The 

 captain is greatly impressed, especially by the first baleen plates, 

 which are cut out four hours later, for they are twelve feet long. 



