Si6 MODERN SEA FISHING 



with a bucket on it, and should the line in the boat be rapidly 

 decreasing, two, three, or more oars will be added according to 

 the emergency of the case ; then the nearest boat will race 

 up, and detaching her harpoons bend on the end of her lines to 

 the look or eye which is spliced at the end of the ' stray line ' 

 of the fast boat. 



In the meantime the whale, whose speed on being first fas- 

 tened is estimated to be from eight to ten miles an hour by that 

 careful observer and scientific whaling skipper, Scoresby, has 

 taken from a line and a half to two lines ; but the harpooneer, 

 watching his opportunity, has got a turn or two of the line round 

 the bollard head, which considerably depresses the bows of the 

 boat, and cutting into the hard wood produces smoke, on which 

 No. 2 is pouring water to prevent it from catching fire. 



In about thirty minutes ' the fish rises, if all goes well, near 

 one of the loose boats, which, racing up to her, places harpoons 

 as circumstances best allow, and if the boat happens to be very 

 near and the fish much blown, there may be time to get in a 

 thrust or two of the lance. These tactics are repeated until 

 the victim has received sufficient harpoons to insure her capture, 

 then each time she rises and a boat can approach her the lance 

 alone is used, till at length she spouts blood, dyeing the water 

 and boats red, and finally rolls over on her side or back, dead, 

 when all hands cheer frantically. 



Her death is sometimes preceded by a violent struggle, in 

 which she lashes the water into foam with her head, flukes, and 

 tail. The foregores are detached, and the lines coiled back 

 into the boats. The whale is then prepared for towing along- 

 side the ship, which is done by cutting a hole through the two 

 fins, passing a line called a ' fin tow ' through these holes, and 



1 Scoresby says the average stay of a fast fish under water is thirty minutes ; 

 the longest he observed was fifty-six minutes ; but he adds that he has heard of 

 fish in shallow water remaining an hour and a half. 



