CHAPTER XI 



WHALING has its seamy side. We met it outside 

 the loch going up west of Shetland the wind had 

 almost dropped, but the cross sea it left was as 

 if several Mulls of Cantire had been rolled together, and 

 neither our little whaler nor its crew liked it a bit. Rocky 

 capes and islands were blurred in mist and spouting foam, 

 and sometimes obscured by passing rain and hail showers. 

 About eight or nine, morning, we were off Flugga, the most 

 northerly point of Britain's possessions, and the weather was 

 simply beastly ; by two in the afternoon, we were about 

 sixty miles north-east, in an intensely blue sea, with immense 

 silky rollers, it might have been in the N.E. Trades. It was 

 just what I expected ; thirty to forty miles north of the 

 islands you strike sun and clear sky we always do, then go 

 west fifty miles and you come up against a curtain of rain. 



At three-five we are sloping along half-speed north-easterly 

 over a splendid silky swell, all our eyes sweeping the horizon. 

 The boy beside me at the wheel is the first to spot a blow, to 

 which we promptly swing our whaler, and immediately after, 

 on the horizon, we discover the faintest possible suggestion 

 of a blow, a minute cloud hardly enough to swear by, as big 

 as the tip of a child's little finger. It fades away and we 

 are sure it is the blow of some kind of whale, and the boy rings 

 up the engine-room and, grinning, shouts down the tube : 

 " Megat Stor Nord Capper, full speed ! " This to make the 

 stokers lay on, for a Nord Capper means l apiece bounty 

 money to each of our crew of ten men. 



At three-ten we begin the hunt ; we go seven miles towards 

 the first blow, when there is a shout from the look-out in the 

 crow's nest, and we find big spouts within a mile from our left. 

 So the skipper goes forward to his beloved rusted swivel gun 

 or cannon, in his weathered green jacket, a picturesque figure 

 against the immense blue silky sunny swell. 



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