NATURAL HISTORY. 95 



whale over. In this hook is fastened a rope, passing through 

 a pulley at the mainmast head, and fixed to a windlass on 

 deck. The blubber is then taken off the upper side by 

 " blubber spades." The blocks of blubber, called " slips," 

 are then hauled up on deck by means of ropes called " speck 

 tackles," speck being the German word for fat or bacon. 

 When the blubber is all stripped from the upper side, the 

 men turn the whale partly round by hauling at the rope 

 fastened to the " kent." They then cut out the whalebone 

 with knives made for that purpose. Lastly, the " kent" 

 itself is stripped off, and the whale left to the sharks and 

 gulls, who have been helping themselves very liberally while 

 the flensing was going on. The shovel-nosed shark sometimes 

 scoops out semicircular pieces as large as a man's head. 



When the crew have time, the blubber, which has been 

 stowed away in a place with a not very polished name, is 

 " made off," that is, carefully stripped of the pieces of skin 

 and muscle adhering to it, cut into moderately sized pieces, 

 and packed in casks until wanted. The oil is extracted by 

 boiling the blubber in large coppers ; a most unsavoury 

 occupation, but a very pleasant one to the crew, if they take 

 that duty upon themselves. The refuse blubber is used as 

 fuel, so that there is no waste. 



It is curious to see how one whale will yield to a single 

 harpoon loosely fixed, while another will break away and 

 escape with five or six in his back, and two miles or so of rope 

 trailing behind it. Some instances have been related of whales 

 being killed without being struck at all. Scoresby tells us 

 that after a boat had killed a whale, it sunk as whales 

 sometimes w r ill dp. While they were hauling it up, the line 

 sometimes pulled, and sometimes came in easily. At last 

 they drew up a whale with a coil of the rope round it, 

 which they naturally thought to be the animal struck by 

 them. After disentangling it they found to their surprise 

 that the line still descended into the sea, and dragged as if 

 there was a weight at its end ; and so there was, for they 

 found their harpooned whale still fixed to the weapon, arid 

 discovered that the other unfortunate animal had contrived 

 to entangle itself in the line, and been drowned. " A whale 

 was struck from one of the boats of the ship Nautilus, in 



