162 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



I have tried it once or twice and always just miss the 

 taste. 



Blue sharks have pretty colours, especially when they are 

 freshly caught, steel-grey and violet on their back, changing 

 to green and white underneath. The long emerald-green eye 

 in the grey skin is most effective wicked-looking to a 

 degree ! Who has described the exquisite colour of the 

 shark's pilot fish, with its upright stripes blue and white, like 

 the wings of a jay, and who can tell why they swim in front 

 of his nose is it to give the shark a squint ? And why do 

 they sometimes change (there are generally two of them) and 

 take up positions on either side of his dorsal fin, and move 

 as the shark moves exactly, never getting an inch from the 

 position, and then, without rhyme or reason, they will both 

 swim away somewhere, and come back again ? 



I think the grimmest aspect of sharks is in a quiet moonlight 

 night, when above the calm water you see their dark fins 

 quietly circling round you, and sometimes there is a whitish 

 gleam as one quietly puts its head up above the moonlit 

 water and quietly takes hold of a lump of whale fat, and 

 breaks the stillness by shaking it like a tiger ! 



Still another half-night at our whale the deck full of 

 moonlight and dark shadows, great cubes of sperm white 

 as marble, gleaming knife blades, the light glinting on oily 

 hands, arms and faces, greasy thumps as chunks of blubber 

 are heaved across the deck towards the cooking pots. Two 

 dusky figures stand on top of these, silhouetted against the 

 blue sky and stars. We work by moonlight, for dark nights 

 we shall have an acetylene flare. The spermaceti of the head 

 we handle in buckets and bailers. It seems a question 

 whether to bail the clean, slippery oil with buckets or grasp 

 it with both hands. All hands work very hard, for every 

 handful, every chunk represents profit to them, and they 

 joke all the time, with never a swear word, as far as I can 

 hear. The captain smokes and looks on and smiles at some 

 of their remarks. He keeps his eye on everything without 

 interfering unnecessarily. The mate, his young brother, 

 and his men want to show what they can do, though this 

 line of business is new to most of them. 



