178 THE WHALE HUNTERS 



his gun on the high bows. A wind was rising and the 

 salt spray was caking on his beard. 



While the catchers continued hunting whales the two 

 towing boats, converted ex-naval corvettes, plodded round 

 collecting the inflated carcasses. With two or three 

 lashed by heavy chains on either side they took them to 

 the factory ship where they were moored to her stern 

 to await their turn to go up the slip. Killer whales 

 cruised among them waiting for a chance to bite out the 

 tongues. 



Carl's big blue was whale No. i. A hawser was 

 shackled to the sling on its tail. One of the fishing 

 winches above the slipway spat steam as its drum began to 

 rotate. The hawser went taut and the whale parted 

 company from the others and entered the square tunnel 

 tail first. It surged in the waves that washed the slipway 

 and would have snapped the thick wire but for the big 

 steel springs hidden under the deck plates near the 

 fishing winch. Another winch rattled and massive iron 

 claws descended from the roof of the tunnel to clasp the 

 tail of the whale. Now the midships winches took over 

 and whale No. i continued its way up the incline and 

 reached that half of the main whaling deck known as the 

 blubber plane. 



Here the Commission's inspector, a retired naval com- 

 mander, armed with notebook and tape measure, made 

 sure that it was not in milk. He could see at a glance that 

 this big blue was well above the minimum length. 



The tail claws were lifted clear and sent aft for the next 

 whale while the razor-sharp knives of the flensers were 

 already making deep cuts from head to tail. Soon the 

 longitudinal strips were being torn from the whale by 

 the smaller winches. In a short while the white carcass, 

 looking like a huge peeled banana, was hauled under the 

 archway in the midships deckhouse by yet another set of 

 winches mounted on the forward part of the ship. The 



