420 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



breathless suspense before we could tell for certain whether the 

 harpoon was in him. He proved to be fast, and we presently 

 saw the harpoon in his left side, high up on the back, a little 

 way below the fin. The harpoon being near the vertebral 

 column apparently prevented his sounding, and he never went 

 far down. Once or twice he put his head out of the water and 

 turned over on his back, and nearly every time he spouted he 

 screamed. A boat was lowered for the purpose of lancing him, 

 with four men to row, a boat-steerer, and harpooner. They 

 rowed carefully round astern of the whale, and then watching 

 their opportunity, approached, and the harpooner lanced it ; 

 the operation was repeated whenever an opportunity offered. 

 Once he dug the lance in so deep that he had to leave go and 

 haul it in by the line attached ; when recovered the lance was 

 much bent, and had to be straightened before being again used. 

 Presently the whale swam a little away and spouted blood, and, 

 dying soon afterwards, sunk. On the return of the boat the crew 

 told us that they had heard the shell explode while they were 

 close to the whale, and this accounted for the somewhat sudden 

 death, which took place three-quarters of an hour from the time 

 of harpooning. Having hoisted the boat and waited a minute or 

 two to see whether the whale were really dead (for, having 

 previously killed only one or two Humpbacks, they were not sure 

 of the behaviour of this species), we began heaving on the line 

 (of which it had taken out seventy fathoms) with the steam- 

 winch, and using an india-rubber relieving tackle or multiplier 

 attached to the foremast, similar to that used on the ' Chal- 

 lenger' Expedition when the dredge was used while the ship 

 was under sail. 



One of the reasons, I believe, why the Humpback Whale is 

 seldom or never hunted by the Scotch or American whalers 

 (independently of the small amount of blubber on them) is that 

 this species almost always sinks when killed (no doubt in con- 

 sequence of having so little blubber), and the lines used in open 

 boats are not strong enough to haul it up by. Even the huge 

 hawsers used by the Norwegians off the Finmarken coast are not 

 strong enough to bear the enormous weight of a large Blue 

 Whale, and I was told of a whaler who had killed a large 

 example which sank, riding to it for three days, and then 

 thinking it must by that time have become sufficiently inflated 



