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him, slackening sometimes to avoid a wild rush, but always reeling in 
slack at every opportunity. The strain soon begins to tell on the whale, his 
rushes growing shorter and less vicious, and finally he rises to the surface, 
lashing the water white in his struggles. Should he blow blood when he 
reaches the surface, the whalers know he is mortally wounded, and wait 
until he dies, but if he blows clear and quiet, the “pram”, a peculiar spoon 
shaped boat adapted from a Norwegian model, is lowered and rowed along 
side and a long lance is driven into him until he blows blood, which shows 
an internal hemorrhage, from the effects of which he soon expires, rolling 
over on his back in his last struggle, and then sinking to the bottom. The 
line is now rapidly hove in until a heavy strain shows the slack is in and 
the weight of the whale is showing, when the line is run through a heavy 
iron block at the foremost head, this being heavily rigged in order to stand 
the tremendous strain. Fathom by fathom the line comes in until at last 
the dead body is alongside. A chain is attached around the tail and the 
winch then heaves the tail out of water, causing the animal to hang ver- 
tically head down from the bow. The vessel is then forced ahead at full 
speed to bring the body to the surface. The lobes of the tail are then sey- 
ered and brought on board. In order to make the carcass more buoyant, 
air is blown into the abdominal cavity by means of a Westinghouse air 
pump. 
If the whaler is not ready to return to the station immediately, a buoy 
with the ship’s flag attached, is secured to the whale, and both allowed 
to go adrift while the vessel continues its hunt, sometimes as many as three 
or more whales being brought in at one time, all with their tails out of the 
water, and hoisted to the bow. Upon arrival at the station the whales are 
attached to a buoy in front of the ship, from which a line is taken and the 
animal hauled into the mouth of the ship between two cribs filled with 
rocks, which act as guides to keep it centered, at the same time to ballast 
the nose of the slip under water at all stages of the tide. A large one 
and a half inch diameter iron chain is then attached to the tail of the 
whale and it is hauled out of the water under the “flensing’ shed by a 
powerful steam winch. As soon as the whale is in place, men with long 
handled knives commence “flensing”, that is, removing the blubber. This 
is a layer of fat directly under the skin, covering the whole body like a huge 
blanket, and varying in thickness from four to seven inches. The men 
walk from the head toward the tail, cutting long gashes in the blubber as 
they go, then a steel hook attached to a wire cable is hooked in at the 
end of a strip, the steam winch heaves in on the wire, and the long strips 
are peeled off one after another. 
As fast as removed the strips of blubber are put into the slicer, or blubber 
cutter, and chopped into half-inch slices, which are dropped into an endless 
bucket elevator to be hoisted to the blubber pots, where the oil is fried out 
by means of steam pipes running through pots. After the blubber is ex- 
hausted in these pots, it is conveyed in a chute to a drainage tank, where 
the bulk of the water is separated by gravity, and then to the dryer, where, 
mixed with the residue of the meat, it is turned into guano. After the blub- 
