FISHERIES 165 



are drowned. As a rule they are very skilful, 

 and they nearly always jab carefully while 

 sitting down. Sometimes, however, the rare 

 occasion serves the rare harpooner, when the 

 whale and canoe appear as if about to meet 

 each other straight head-on. Then, in a 

 flash, the man in the bow is up on his feet, with 

 the harpoon so poised that the rocking water, 

 the mettlesome canoe, and his watchful com- 

 rade in the stern, all form part of the con- 

 centrated energy with which he brings his 

 every faculty to a single point of instantaneous 

 action. There, for one fateful moment, he 

 stands erect, his whole tense body like the full- 

 drawn bow before it speeds the arrow home. 

 He throws : and then, for some desperate 

 minutes, it is often a fight to a finish between 

 the whale's life and his own. 



The old wooden whaling vessel under mast 

 and sail is almost extinct. But it had a long 

 and splendid career. The Basques, who were 

 then the models for the world, began in the 

 Gulf before Jacques Cartier came ; and worked 

 the St Lawrence with wonderful success as 

 high as the basin of Quebec. The French 

 never whaled in Canada ; but the ' Bluenose ' 

 Nova Scotians did, and held their own against 

 all comers. ' A dead whale or a stove boat ' 



