FISHERIES 169 



umbrella, with four ribs that open when the 

 bomb in the handle explodes inside the whale, 

 which it thus anchors to the steamer. The 

 whole steamer then plays the whale as an angler 

 plays a fish, letting out line — sometimes two 

 miles of it — towing with stopped engines at 

 first, and then winding in while giving quarter, 

 half, and three-quarter speed astern, as the 

 steamer gains on the whale. Even a steamer, 

 however, has been charged, stove, and sunk. 

 And a fighting humpback in the Gulf of St 

 Lawrence is no easy game to tackle with a 

 hand-lance in a pram. Norwegians are thrifty 

 folk, and bomb harpooning is expensive. So 

 when the whale and steamer meet, at the end 

 of the chase, a tiny pram is launched with two 

 men rowing and a third standing up in the stern 

 to wield the fifteen-foot lance. As the hump- 

 back's flippers are also fifteen feet long, and 

 as they thrash about with blows that have sunk 

 several prams and killed more than one crew, 

 it still requires the fittest nerves and muscles 

 to give the final stroke. 



But whaling, in this and every other form, 

 is bound to come to an untimely end very soon 

 unless the whales are protected by international 

 game laws rigidly enforced. At present the 

 only protection is the exhaustion of a whaling 



