102 A HUNDKED YEARS 



" As soon as the boat people learnt the leader was 

 ashore, the boats dashed in among the shoal, busy with 

 every deadly weapon they could lay hands on, till the 

 sea was mere bloody mud. I saw my spit-bearer poking 

 his spit into shining backs as they emerged from the 

 water alongside his boat, and I saw also a leather-cutter 

 busy with his knife, imagining he was killing whales also, 

 while in reality he was only spoiling their leather, for 

 below the skin, which naturally he cut, was a mass ol 

 blubber. I soon expended all my bullets at point-blank 

 distance. The sea seemed pink, nearly scarlet. 



" Every now and then a boat was upset by a whale 

 rising to the surface underneath it, and the noise of the 

 killers and the semi-drowning people and the onlookers 

 on the shore was astounding, a whale sometimes getting 

 his head so much above water that he could join in the 

 uproar, which he did with a will. One boat stuck 

 near the shore, and a badly wounded whale took to 

 spouting blood in a stream as thick as my arm from 

 his blow-hole. He anchored exactly astern of the 

 stranded boat, and rather astonished its crew by 

 regularly deluging them with a continuous stream of 

 pure blood . The water was too deep for the men to jump 

 ashore, and in a few minutes, in spite of their seeking 

 shelter under the thwarts or at the side of the boat, 

 any one of them might have applied for a place as the 

 Demon clothed in scarlet in Der FreischiUz ; and instead 

 of their receiving pity from the spectators, the shore just 

 rang with yells of laughter. 



" When it was low water I went among the ninety- 

 six captives, and forgetting that they were not fish. 



