WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 69 



and to read in a note from the Works Manager that we 

 have at last to act as harpooneer. 



Yell Sound is calm as a mill-pond, with swiftly running 

 tides as we go south and east past the Outer Skerries. We 

 aim at a latitude N.E. of the Shetlands beyond the " forty- 

 mile whaling limit " made against British whalers only. 



Even with a glassy calm a steam-whaler has a rolling send. 

 She seems to make her own swell to plunge over, but it's a 

 silky, quick, silent motion that, once accustomed to, you 

 never notice ; though old seamen are prostrated with it when 

 they first experience it. Round about the islands we see 

 many seals and an endless variety of divers and other sea- 

 birds and some herring-hog or springers, a small finner whale 

 (Balaenoptera Vaga), and porpoises in great numbers, so we 

 practise swinging and aiming our gun in the bows at them, 

 against the time when we have to fire at the mighty Fin 

 whale (A), Blue whale (B), Seihvale (C), Nord Capper (D), or 

 Sperm (E), 1 for even Sperm and the Nord Capper we have killed 

 in the last two years off the Shetlands, yet the Nord Capper or 

 Atlantic Right whale, Biscayensis, was supposed to be extinct ! 

 and the sperm or cachalot is a warm-water whale and only 

 occasionally is found as far north as the Northern Shetlands, 

 or as far south as the South Shetlands south of Cape Horn. 



The modern whale gun or swivel cannon is on the steamer's 

 bow and is swung in any direction by a pistol grip. It weighs 

 about two tons, but it is well balanced when it has the one- 

 and-a-half hundredweight harpoon in it so that a hefty man can 

 swing it fairly easily in any direction. The difficulty for the 

 landsman shooting is, of course, in his sea-legs you must be 

 absolutely unconscious of them and of the vessel's movement, 

 or of pitch and roll, and the wet of cold, bursting seas that 

 may come over you at any time in the pursuit ; but, given 

 good sea-legs and indifference to a wetting, and there is nothing 

 in ordinary circumstances to prevent, say, a fairly quick 

 pistol shot from killing his whale, a certain amount of strength 

 and nerve is required for the final lancing from the pram or 

 small boat, but that is seldom done nowadays, for a second 



1 A. Balaenoptera Musculus ; B. Balaenoptera Sibbaldii ; C. Balaenop- 

 tera Borealis ; D. Balaena Biscayensis ; E. Physeter Macrocephalus. 



