3l8 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



and after a lean period of enforced idleness and with a storm ap- 

 proaching, too many whales to come, and the sky darkening by the 

 minute, any crew can become careless. The first accident coincided 

 with the first cry of "bada" on the second whale. 



Either the winchman jumped the gun in his eagerness and ripped 

 the great mass free before the chief flenser had completed his last 

 cut, or the fienser did not give early enough warning, or the boy was 

 just not listening. More than a ton of flesh, with the eight hundred- 

 odd baleen plates attached, literally catapulted out of the whale's 

 gaping mouth at the same moment that a heavy steel pulley and grap- 

 pling hook swung across its path. This was flipped aside like a flying 

 steel ball, caught the boy behind the ear, and smacked him to the 

 scuppers. He was quite dead before he hit the bulwark. The chief 

 fienser just looked at the winchman. Neither spoke. The work did 

 not stop even when the medicos hurried on deck. 



This accident slowed the tempo on the afterdeck somewhat, but 

 the clatter forward was so great that the crews there did not know 

 what had happened until disaster struck them also. A cable snapped, 

 depositing a vast hunk of bone and flesh on one of the power saws, 

 which shattered while racing at full speed. Bits of steel flew in all 

 directions, engines raced, and men screamed, but when the sound 

 and the fury died away and the men examined themselves and each 

 other, nobody, surprisingly, was hurt. Nevertheless, this too slowed 

 down the work so much that whale number two had to lie on the 

 afterdeck, pink and bloody and completely denuded of blubber, 

 waiting to pass through "Hell's Gate" to the forward deck. Every- 

 body aft, from the bosun and his Shelties to the tiniest blubberboy, 

 moped and cursed the lemmers and the engineers. Then the loud- 

 speaker blared once again, announcing that the ship was coming 

 about. By this time a fresh breeze was blowing and light flurries of 

 snow were sweeping by. 



The storm hit so suddenly that even the radiomen were taken by 

 surprise, despite the fact they had been glued to their squawk-boxes 

 all day. What is more, as is the way in the Antarctic, a towering sea 

 came almost on the heels of the first wind. Within minutes, the usual 

 pandemonium began and, to make matters worse, the Corvette 

 heaved in sight again through the thickening gloom, quite unan- 

 nounced, with four more whales in tow. 



