STEEL SHIPS AND HELICOPTERS 1 75 



giving her no time to refresh her lungs. Then she broke 

 surface to starboard well within the hundred yards range 

 of the gun. 



Carl swung the gun, sighted and pressed the trigger. 

 The ship shook with the explosion and the harpoon 

 flashed through the air with the nylon forerunner snaking 

 after it and as it hit the blue-grey shape there was a 

 second duller explosion. The whale sounded and the 

 manilla whale line went whistling out through the fairlead 

 in the bows. 



'Fish on!' The cry echoed through the ship. Whale- 

 men still call the whale a fish though all the world now 

 knows that it is a mammal. 



But this is coarse fishing compared with the light rod 

 and fly methods in the days when the wooden whaleboat 

 with a thin manilla line running round a loggerhead 

 played a monster a hundred times her own weight. Now 

 it is a four-hundred-ton ship with a 2000 h.p. engine, a 

 manilla line three times as thick, winches to haul and veer 

 and big steel springs to take the shock from a whale that is 

 usually mortally wounded from the start anyway. But 

 let no one say that it is not still the most thrilling of big 

 game hunting. 



Very carefully so that the harpoon should not be pulled 

 out the whale was hauled to the ship. It lashed once with 

 its tail and then dying, rolled on its side to reveal the 

 white corrugated skin of its throat. 



When it was hauled to ship a hole was made in its side, 

 a valve inserted and air pumped in to prevent it from 

 sinking. The hole was stoppered, the tail flukes were 

 trimmed and a wire sling fitted round the small of the tail. 

 The number of the catcher and the whale were carved on 

 its side and a bamboo with a flag on it erected on the 

 summit — and all at great speed for there was a school of 

 fin whales spouting to the southward. 



Away went Catcher No. 9 with Carl standing ready at 



