86 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



Five minutes the whale stays down, then comes up to 

 starboard. " How many were there ? " says Jensen to the 

 look-out in the crow's nest. " Two big and a calf." Eight 

 minutes they stay down and appear half-a-mile to star- 

 board ; there is the lovely silence of a sailing-ship as we wait 

 with the engines stopped, studying fleecy clouds and the silky 

 blue stripe our track has left on the swell. It is this rapid 

 contrast that gives the charm to whaling this morning, in 

 hail and black-eyed sea, a blurred sea and landscape of 

 beaten cliffs and capes ; this afternoon a wide horizon, and 

 not a ship in sight, the colour and width of it ! But here he 

 is ! He came up half-a-mile to port appeared two or three 

 times, at a few seconds' interval, then " tailed up," that 

 slow, farewell turn over of the after part of the body as it 

 goes down for a deep dive ; and we follow its general direc- 

 tion. In ten minutes he appears a mile to N.W. It is four 

 o'clock, the air S. W. and cold, and bright enough to be N.E. 



" Saghte ! " (Norse for softly, slowly), he ought to be 

 up soon. . . . 4.3 P.M. There he is half-a-mile to east we 

 hear the blast. These North-Altantic whales don't make 

 half such a resonant loud blast as the Antarctic whales 

 . . . another whale blowing to E. by S. . . . Four-twelve. 

 Within two hundred yards, a little to port we follow, a 

 stern chase note blue sky reflected on wet plum-coloured 

 back . . . within fifty yards when he made his last dive, 

 Jensen had the gun swung . . . separate whale appears to 

 the right very large . . . nearly fired. Four-twenty. 

 Behind, to port, we swing round we are lacing the rippling 

 swell with blue silky bands " Lord ! " there it is ! at the 

 second rise under our bow BANG ! 



A splendid shot ! away goes the line at seventy miles the 

 hour and we are hauled quickly round, and are taken in tow 

 eight miles an hour and the engines going eight miles astern, 

 if that is not exhilarating ! 



Jensen wipes his nose on red handkerchief the cook and 

 engineer are at the winch brakes there is a thin furrow of 

 Union Jack colours, red blood, white foam in the blue of 

 ocean and the line still whirling out at intervals. We " fish 



