240 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



The most interesting part of the cutting-up to me was the 

 first fastening of the immense blubber-hook, a large iron 

 hook of extraordinary dimensions, to attach which, one of 

 the boat-steerers has to go down upon the whale, with a rope 

 slung around his waist in case of accident, and lift the hook 

 for it takes all his strength to do that in to a hole which 

 the spades of the boat-headers have cut for it ; these, at the 

 same time, keeping watch over the boat-steerer, who is some- 

 times half under water, and has half-a-dozen sharks close 

 around him, which the scent of the blood has enticed to the 

 captured fish, and which are driven nearly to madness by 

 their unvailing efforts to tear off a piece of the tough and 

 elastic hide. 



There were five of these hyenas of the deep round this one 

 whale, and coming as boldly and insolently as possible right 

 under the spades of the men. But the sailors hate to strike 

 their sharpened tools upon the rough and hard skin of the 

 shark because it dulls their instruments directly, and the 

 carpenters have their hands full of work without that, in 

 keeping the instruments in good order. Only once the first 

 boat-header dropped his spade which was as sharp as a razor, 

 upon the head of a shark, and laid it open as if it had been a 

 soft potato. The shark, a fellow of about seven feet long, had 

 come up to the boat steerer who had just succeeded in 

 fastening the hook, and had no time to look round close 

 enough to take one of his legs off with a single snap, but the 

 spade prevented it. Showing the white of its belly directly, 

 it sank, and the boat-steerer looking over his shoulder and 

 seeing his dead enemy, only shook his fist at it as it disap- 

 peared in the troubled and bloody water. 



The cutting up, or hoisting in of the blubber, occupied all 

 the next day, and even when it had become perfectly dark, 

 one of the heads was still in the water, held by a rope and 

 pushed about by a couple of sharks, which had already torn 

 off big pieces from it. 





