THE WHALES ALONG THE SHORE 25 



formed a tandem and towed the whale slowly and 

 laboriously to the shore. Thirty-six men pulled as a 

 single crew. The sun went down and the sea wind lost 

 its warmth. Jonathan shivered. 



'Let us go down now/ said Ebenezer. 



Darkness had covered the sea when the whale was 

 finally brought to the shore and made secure. 



In the flickering candlelight of one of the huts where 

 the crews were enjoying a well earned meal Jonathan 

 found Joseph Mather. He was, as Jonathan guessed 

 from the size of the clothes he had borrowed, a tall, well- 

 built fellow and looked about seventeen years old. Under 

 a mop of dark curly hair his bronzed eager face lit with a 

 friendly smile when he learned that Jonathan was the boy 

 who was employed at his father's inn and over the meal of 

 fish and whale steaks there was much for them to talk 

 about, for Joseph had not visited his home for several 

 weeks. 



That night Jonathan slept in a rough wooden bunk 

 against the log wall of the hut. The bunk was hard with- 

 out a mattress and in another bunk over his head the sound 

 of Ebenezer's breathing was like a saw cutting through a 

 whale's backbone. From around the hut came a 

 chorus of other various unmusical sounds and from 

 outside came the deep bass roar of the surf. But none of 

 these affected Jonathan for he slept the sleep of deep 

 oblivion. 



After a hurried breakfast in the cold light before dawn 

 Jonathan went to where two black carcasses each nearly 

 sixty feet long lay in the white surf. Already the two 

 rows of baleen (or whale fins as they were then called) had 

 been cut from the twenty-foot long upper jaws of one of 

 them. They lay in bundles on the beach to await clean- 

 ing. From this came the strong flexible substance known 

 as whalebone which, although even in those times could 

 command a good price, reached its highest value in the 



