360 LABRADOR 
is likely to be trouble. With the powerful engine going 
full speed astern, the whale will tow the steamer ahead, 
they say, at several knots an hour. It seems never to 
face the enemy voluntarily ; and though one, after sounding, 
came up through the engine-room floor and sank the vessel, 
it probably did so by chance in its dying agony or “ flurry.” 
A sunken whale can only be raised by steam power, and 
once it is dead, it will otherwise remain down till putre- 
faction sets in. Then after eight or nine days the retained 
gases bring it to the surface. In Iceland where the fishery, 
after fifty years’ prosecution, has destroyed the supply of 
inshore whales, a sunk whale is sometimes buoyed and left 
for another steamer to haul home. But the smell is then 
so dreadful, and the oil so brown and so inferior in value, 
that this delay in cutting up 1s avoided as often as possible. 
Here on the Labrador the dying whale is hauled alongside 
and given the coup de grace with a long lance, or possibly 
a second bomb may be fired into him. A long, hollow rod 
is then driven in, a force-pump is attached, and the great 
leviathan is inflated like a foot-ball. His tail is now triced 
up to the rigging, the flukes, as a rule, being cut off for 
convenience. Thus he is carried in triumph home to the 
factory, or anchored off while another victim is sought for. 
Till late years the carcass was a waste product and was 
allowed to float away or rot in the neighbouring coves. 
There it fouled the air and water and made the very rocks 
greasy and offensive. Now with the excellent machinery 
the meat is cut up and treated with heat and acid. Almost 
one-third as much good oil is thus extracted as is pumped 
from the “case” in the head. The flesh is then passed 
along from the vats to be dry heated with the crushed 
