TURTLES AND PORPOISES 49 



a foot long. This cylinder is a tonite bomb-gun, 

 A short piece of metal projects from the flat 

 lower end. This is the trigger. When the har- 

 poon is thrown into the buttery, blubber- 

 wrapped body of the whale, it sinks in until the 

 whale's skin presses the trigger up into the gun 

 and fires it with a tiny sound like the explosion 

 of an old-fashioned shotgun cap. An instant 

 later a tonite bomb explodes with a muffled roar 

 in the whale's vitals. 



The Arctic Ocean whaling fleet which sails out 

 of San Francisco and which in the year of my 

 voyage numbered thirty vessels, makes its spring 

 rendezvous in the Hawaiian Islands. Most of 

 the ships leave San Francisco in December and 

 reach Honolulu in March. The two or three 

 months spent in this leisurely voyage are known 

 in whaler parlance as " between seasons." On 

 the way to the islands the ships cruise for sperm 

 whales and sometimes lower for finbacks, sul- 

 phur-bottoms, California grays, and even black 

 fish, to practice their green hand crews. 



Captain Winchester did not care particularly 

 whether he took any sperm whales or not, though 



