26 The Story of the New England Whalers 



in the whale, and threw overboard the sealskin 

 float. The whale, in plunging under water, 

 brought a strain on the harpoon line, of course, 

 because of the resistance offered by the float: but 

 this strain, instead of drawing the harpoon head 

 out of the whale, turned it around in the blubber 

 so that the only way of getting it out thereafter 

 was to cut it out. 



This "toggle" harpoon was in use above 

 Bering's Strait and on the coast of Greenland for 

 no one knows how many years before a bright 

 Negro blacksmith at New Bedford invented the 

 same style of weapon for the use of white whalers. 



As for the Eskimo lance, it consisted of a long 

 shaft with a chipped-flint head as broad as a 

 man's hand a genuine paleolith sort of spear, 

 such as the ablest of the cave dwellers would 

 have thought perfection. It seems to the white 

 whaler now like a crude weapon, something 

 "heathenish for fair," as the writer once heard 

 an old whaler say; but while the modern Eskimo 

 has the lighter and sharper lance of the white 

 man, together with the terrible bomb-lance gun, 

 he yet carries one of those ancient stone-headed 



