CHAPTER XXXVI 



TO-DAY it is almost rough, a fresh north-east breeze, 

 and as our little ship rolls far and often in a swell, 

 or anything like a sea, strong men turn pale and say 

 they feel a little tired and will go and lie down. 



Killers appeared at middag-mad, and but for the excusable 

 lassitude of our party we might have tried for one, even 

 though it is a little rough for accurate harpooning. Their 

 great black fins, " gaff -topsails," sailor-men call them, cut 

 through the water with a spirt of foam like a destroyer's bow. 

 Some say they use their dorsal fin as a weapon with which 

 to attack large whales from underneath (Balaenoptera and 

 Mysticetus), but I do not believe this, for it is not sufficiently 

 firm to do harm. 



Some have higher fins than others. I feel afraid to 

 mention the length I have seen them myself, or to quote the 

 height another observer has given to me ; but I think we 

 may say eight feet and be well on the safe side. Others 

 are only about two or three feet. In the Antarctic ice I 

 have often seen them going along the edge of a floe, and 

 our men stated that with this fin they pulled the seals off the 

 edge of the ice into the water, but verily I do not believe 

 them. The same men vowed that the Cape pigeon, which 

 they saw for the first time in their lives, a chequered black 

 and white petrel (Daption capensis), was a cuckoo. They 

 were quite sure of this, for one of these Dundonian whalers 

 had once spent a summer on shore and had seen a cuckoo ! 

 That was in the memorable year when he saw ripe corn for 

 the first time. 



Another excuse we make to ourselves for not pursuing 

 these whales is that they do not have very much blubber ; 

 still, if we fall in with them again in little quieter water when 

 we all feel fit, we may take some. When you get fast to one 

 of these killers the others hang round till their companion is 

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