292 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



quite dead, much as sperm whales do, and even try to help 

 their harpooned friend to freedom by giving him a shoulder 

 on either side. Bottle-nose whales do the same, so when you 

 get one on a line you run it till you secure some of the others. 

 Big finners generally bolt in a great hurry and leave their 

 harpooned relatives to look after themselves, excepting 

 young finners in apron-strings, which will also hang round 

 the parent. 



Dr W. S. Bruce told me that when he was on H.S.H. the 

 Prince of Monaco's yacht with a boat's crew they tackled 

 one of these killers, and the unwounded killers came so close 

 to the boat they could touch them with their hands. What 

 must have been most interesting and instructive was the 

 fact that the skipper who did the harpooning had been a 

 Peterhead whaler and he knew all the expressions appropri- 

 ate to the first rush of a whale in four languages Scots, 

 English, French and Italian and he used them all. These 

 killers run to twenty or thirty feet. With really big whales, 

 heavy harpoon, big gun and huge lines, the whole business is 

 so gigantic and awe-inspiring that men are silent, breath- 

 lessly so ! But with lighter tackle somehow or other there 

 is usually a good deal of small talk. This killer thrasher 

 grampus or Orca gladiator, Tyrannus balaenarum, has great 

 teeth and eats whales piecemeal, porpoise, seals, and, some 

 say, his own kind. 



An accepted Danish authority, Eschricht, declared he 

 opened a killer, and it contained the remains of no less than 

 thirteen porpoises and fourteen seals. Personally, I do not 

 understand how, even with two stomachs, a thirty-foot 

 grampus could hold such a lot, unless they were very small 

 specimens. The reader may not be aware that many whales 

 have two or more stomachs, like ruminants, but whether they 

 rechew their food is doubtful. The immobility of the tongue, 

 and in some species the absence of teeth, is supposed to make 

 this improbable, but to the writer this immobility of the 

 tongue is not proved ; it seems to be a great purple pillow 

 covered with innumerable nerve points which might readily 

 break up the small shrimps on the rough, mat-like surface of 

 the whalebone palate. If they ruminate, and that under 



