WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 93 



tow. The smoke cleared and the wads lay in the swelling 

 vortex the monster left, and then the line rushed ! 



Who can describe the heart-stopping thrill as the monster 

 breaks the surface within shot, only perhaps the dry-fly man, 

 he must experience exactly the same in a minute degree. 



But this whale will not die, we must lance it ; an eighteen- 

 foot spear is the lance half iron, half wood. The pram is 

 swung out we are dropped half on top of our dead whale 

 and slide off somehow. Jensen is handed the lance and away 

 we go, double sculls. Over the glassy rollers we go at a good 

 pace, the whale is six hundred yards away or more and 

 wandering from left to right, and ahead, in the deep swell, it 

 seems as if it would be a long business to get into reach. We 

 back the stern in and Jensen makes a great lunge and the 

 spear goes in five feet and is twisted out of his hand and the 

 vast body rolls over, the tail rises up and up and comes down 

 in a sea of foam. We pull clear back in again at next rise and 

 draw the spear all bent, straighten it, and one more thrust 

 finishes the business and the whale spouts red and dies. 



It is a quarter to eight when we finally get the tail up to 

 our port bow and go off easterly ; we must be seventy miles 

 N.E. off the Shetland Isles. 



Whales seem to be such good beasts, and have such kind 

 brown eyes nothing of the fish in them, and their colouring 

 is that of all the sea ; their backs are grey-black to dove- 

 colour, reflecting the blue of the sky, and the white of their 

 underside is like the white of a kid glove with the faintest 

 pink beneath, so white it makes the sea-foam look grey as it 

 washes across it to and fro, and the white changes to emerald- 

 green in the depths to the blue-green of an iceberg's foot. It 

 is strange that this skin should be so extremely delicate in 

 such a large animal ; it is too thin to be used as leather. 



Our first whale was fifty- four feet, say fifty tons, equal to 

 twenty-five to thirty barrels of oil. Second whale, seventy 

 feet, say forty barrels of oil. 



The second whale was a bull " fish," according to S. 

 Johnson of Fleet Street, and the dark colouring came farther 

 over the white corduroy waistcoat than in the female. It is 

 curious how the grey colour blends into the white exactly as 



