Sketches Afloat with the Whalers 275 



and lift the carcass to the surface "like a speared 

 sucker," as a whaleman said to the writer. 



Sometimes a boat abandoned, for the time, 

 a whale that it had killed in order to pursue an- 

 other near at hand. When two whales were 

 killed by one boat's crew they sometimes left 

 one afloat where it died while they towed the 

 other to the ship. In every whale left adrift 

 the men planted a signal flag called the "waif." 

 The "waif" was to guide the searchers who 

 always went after the carcass. 



When the boats were lowered, the men remain- 

 ing on the ship kept a careful lookout, watching 

 the whales and the boats. If the whales were 

 not instantly found by the boats' crews, these 

 lookouts signalled the location of the whale by 

 waving a flag kept at the masthead for that pur- 

 pose, and by manipulating the sails in various 

 ways. Every ship had its own private code of 

 signals for such occasions, and the display, when 

 the boats of several ships were following one 

 whale, was sometimes wildly exciting. 



After towing a dead whale to the ship the crew 

 secured it alongside by means of a chain that 



