514 MODERN SEA FISHING 



forget the first time he heard this old whaling cry ; indeed, 

 for anyone to thoroughly realise the excitement this yell pro- 

 duces on board of a whaler, he must have been present and 

 have assisted at the capture of a fish. 



Let the reader imagine a whaler with her maintopsail aback 

 more or less surrounded by ice, and two boats on the ' bran ' 

 (an expression used for a boat on the look-out for fish when 

 none are in sight), the oars in the men's hands but care- 

 fully kept out of the water, placed at such points along a floe 

 or near a heavy piece of ice as from long experience the old 

 skipper considers the most likely point for a whale to appear. 



A fish suddenly rises near at hand, and the boat-steerer, 

 sweeping the boat round gently with his long oar, sculls 

 noiselessly towards the monster. The skipper in the ' crow's 

 nest' (a barrel placed at the highest feasible point on the 

 mast, from which the captain or one of the mates keeps a look- 

 out for fish or leads through the ice) has made out the whale 

 nearly as soon as those in the boat, and bringing his power- 

 ful glass to bear, discovers she is of no ordinary size, and that 

 her bone will probably measure between ten and eleven feet, 

 which generally realises about a ton of whalebone a valuable 

 prize in these days. 



The harpooneer rises to his gun, there is a puff of smoke as 

 the missile buries itself deeply in the fish, and, swinging the dis- 

 charged weapon out of his way, he thrusts or throws the hand 

 harpoon in also. Promptly the boat-steerer sweeps the boat clear 

 of the fish, runs his oar out of the way, and tearing off the 

 line cover, assisted by the line manager (who pulls stroke oar), 

 carefully tends the line as it runs rapidly down the centre of 

 the boat. The rest of the unoccupied crew place seal clubs, 

 boathooks, or anything else that will answer the purpose, in such 

 ways as will prevent the line getting foul of anything in the 

 boat. 



