STEEL SHIPS AND HELICOPTERS 173 



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cleaned of the last remnants of sperm oil with boiling salt 

 water, for the oil of the big toothed whale is quite different 

 chemically from that of the baleen whales. 



The radio chattered with cross-talk in Norwegian, 

 Dutch, German and English as the Wanderer^s operators 

 tuned into the wave lengths of rival expeditions. Every- 

 one was closing into the edge of the ice that sits like a white 

 cap on the south polar regions. 



Then at 24.00 hours on January ist the catchers were 

 released like a pack of hungry hounds and the hunt for 

 baleen whales was on. It was now every catcher and 

 every expedition for itself and the devil take the hindmost. 



With the catcher throbbing along at fifteen knots Carl 

 stood on the bridge peering through the half-light of the 

 early dawn that follows the brief Antarctic night. Aloft 

 in the crows-nest the lookout circled his big binoculars 

 around the flat mirror of the sea on which the ice floes lay 

 scattered like pieces of broken white china. On some of 



