SHORE-WHALING : A WORLD INDUSTRY 



419 



cass almost as long as 

 herself, plowed slowly 

 up to the wharf, and 

 after a rope from the 

 shore had been made 

 fast to the flukes of the 

 whale, dropped it into 

 the water and backed off 

 to anchor in the bay. 



Immediately a heavy 

 chain was made fast 

 about the body just for- 

 ward of the tail, the 

 winch started, and the 

 whale drawn slowly into 

 the air over the end of 

 the wharf. As it came 

 upward the eager cut- 

 ters attacked it, slicing 

 off enormous blocks of 

 flesh and blubber, which 

 were at once seized by 

 "hookmen" and drawn 

 to the back of the plat- 

 form. Meanwhile two 

 other cutters were at 

 work in a "sampan" di- 

 viding the carcass just 

 forward of the dorsal 

 fin. The entire posterior 

 part of the whale was 

 then drawn upward and 

 lowered on the wharf to 

 be stripped of blubber 

 and flesh. Transverse 

 incisions were made in the portion of 

 the body remaining in the water, a hook 

 fastened to a blanket piece, and as the 

 blubber was torn off by the winch the 

 carcass rolled over and over. The dis- 

 jointed head was hoisted bodily onto the 

 pier. Section by section the carcass was 

 cut apart and drawn upward to fall into 

 the hands of the men on the wharf and 

 be sliced into great blocks two or three 

 feet square (see page 412). 



The scene was one of "orderly con- 

 fusion" — men, women, and girls laugh- 

 ing and chattering, running here and 

 there, sometimes stopping for a few 

 words of banter, but each with his, or 

 her, own work to do. Above the babel 

 of sounds, the strange, half-wild, mean- 



Photo by courtesy of World's Work 



the; harpoon gun used for killing and capturing 

 whai.es (see page 423) 



ingless chant, "Ya-ra-cu-ra-sa," rose and 

 died away, swelling again in a fierce 

 chorus as the sweating, half -naked men 

 pulled and strained at a great jawbone 

 or swung the hundred-pound chunks of 

 flesh into the waiting hand-cars which 

 carried them to the washing vats. Some- 

 times a kimona-clad, bare-footed girl 

 slipped on the oily boards or treacherous,, 

 sliding, blubber cakes and sprawled into' 

 a great pool of blood, rising amid roars; 

 of laughter to shake herself, wipe the 

 red blotches from her little stub nose, 

 and go on as merrily as before. 



It was essentially a good - natured 

 crowd, working hard and ceaselessly, 

 but deriving as much fun from their 

 labor as though it was a holiday. The 



