32 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



over all the world ; half-a-life's experience of any of them 

 would fill a book. But of them all I think I'd sooner have 

 my friend Henriksen's experiences. Young as he is, he has 

 perhaps had more experience in whaling than any of them. 

 He was whaling for the Japanese when they opened fire on 

 the Russian fleet. At least he had been he stopped when 

 the guns began to fire, and took his little whaling steamer 

 behind an island, and he and another Norsk whaling skipper 

 climbed to the top of it and viewed the fight from shelter. I 

 believe they were almost the only Europeans besides the 

 Russians who saw that spectacle. Henriksen has a red 

 lacquered cup a present from the Mikado in recognition of 

 his services for supplying food in shape of whale to Yusako 

 during the war. In time of peace there they eat the whole 

 whale, paying several dollars a kilo for best whale blubber 

 and as much or little less for the meat. 



We in the Shetlands turn the fat oil into lubricants, etc., and 

 the meat into guano for the fertilisation of crops. I suppose 

 it comes to the same thing in the end, if " all flesh is grass." 



So the talk, as can be imagined, wanders far afield in the 

 Britannia. I heard a skipper asked by a layman what 

 corners of the world he had been in, and he paused to con- 

 sider and replied: " Well, I've not been in the White Sea." 

 From Arctic to Antarctic he'd sailed a keel in every salt sea 

 in the world bar the White Sea and the Caspian. The tele- 

 phone interrupts many a yarn ; perhaps Jarman Jensen, our 

 ship's chandler, calls up someone about provisioning a 

 station, say for three years food, etc., for one hundred men 

 for that time or longer ; or perhaps there is a less important 

 order from Frau Pedersen ringing up her husband from their 

 little farm, telling him to call at the grocer on his way home, 

 and he perhaps tells her he thinks he may not get out in time 

 for dinner, and " Oh, buy a house in town, Olaus " is possibly 

 the jesting answer a great saying here in Tonsberg, where 

 men sometimes are said by their wives to dawdle away the 

 afternoon in the Britannia, when they are really deep in 

 whaling finance, planning whaling stations for islands known, 

 or almost unknown down south on the edge of the Antarctic, 

 or on the coast of Africa or the Antipodes. 



