INTRODUCTION 



struggling "fish" and so earn the bonus that rewards the 

 winning crew. 



A mighty gray-black head, entangled in a clinging web 

 of wire, rears from out the water. Up, up, it goes till a 

 huge bulk of body towers a good fifty feet in the air, its 

 side fins thrashing wildly in a smother of foam. It curves 

 in an arch and then, like an arrow, down go whale and net 

 together for the "sound." 



Not for long, though. The upward drag of the bunched 

 net-floats, and its necessity for breath, bring the "fish" 

 quickly to the surface a spouting, snorting, wallowing 

 mass; mad with rage, wild with terror of the unknown, 

 clinging horror that envelopes it. 



Bang ! bang ! go the guns from each boat, in quick suc- 

 cession. Both irons are home and well placed. A wild 

 quiver of flukes and fins, and the whale either "sounds" 

 again or "races" along the surface, towing the boats after 

 it at express speed. But the net holds fast, and at each 

 new effort for freedom the victim becomes more hopelessly 

 "wound up" than before. 



Soon, exhausted with futile struggling, the whale comes 

 to rest, and there is a momentary cessation of the mad fight 

 as the leviathan pauses for breath. Huge, panting air-gasps 

 are plainly audible aboard our launch at a distance of half 

 a mile. 



The crews are quick to seize the opportunity. With the 

 lance-men ready in the bow, the boats sweep in, one on 

 either side. "Steady with the lance." "Now !" Eight-foot 

 steel blades drive deep for the heart behind the pectoral fins. 



A shiver, a hissing spout of water and blood, a wallow 

 and roll of the huge, wire-tangled carcass, flashes of red 

 and white foam in the sunlight, and the black heave of a 

 twenty-foot fin that for one dread instant, scimitar-shaped, 

 a falling wall of bone and sinew, hangs over the boat and 

 its occupants. The boat's crew back out like lightning, just 

 in time. Down crashes the mighty flail, missing its blow 



7 



