360 LABRADOR 



is likely to be trouble. With the powerful engine going 

 full speed astern, the whale will tow the steamer ahead, 

 they say, at several knots an hour. It seems never to 

 face the enemy voluntarily ; and though one, after sounding, 

 came up through the engine-room floor and sank the vessel, 

 it probably did so by chance in its dying agony or " flurry." 

 A sunken whale can only be raised by steam power, and 

 once it is dead, it will otherwise remain down till putre- 

 faction sets in. Then after eight or nine days the retained 

 gases bring it to the surface. In Iceland where the fishery, 

 after fifty years' prosecution, has destroyed the supply of 

 inshore whales, a sunk whale is sometimes buoyed and left 

 for another steamer to haul home. But the smell is then 

 so dreadful, and the oil so brown and so inferior in value, 

 that this delay in cutting up is avoided as often as possible. 

 Here on the Labrador the dying whale is hauled alongside 

 and given the coup de grace with a long lance, or possibly 

 a second bomb may be fired into him. A long, hollow rod 

 is then driven in, a force-pump is attached, and the great 

 leviathan is inflated like a foot-ball. His tail is now triced 

 up to the rigging, the flukes, as a rule, being cut off for 

 convenience. Thus he is carried in triumph home to the 

 factory, or anchored off while another victim is sought for. 

 Till late years the carcass was a waste product and was 

 allowed to float away or rot in the neighbouring coves. 

 There it fouled the air and water and made the very rocks 

 greasy and offensive. Now with the excellent machinery 

 the meat is cut up and treated with heat and acid. Almost 

 one-third as much good oil is thus extracted as is pumped 

 from the "case" in the head. The flesh is then passed 

 along from the vats to be dry heated with the crushed 



