The Monticellonian., 1902-07-11


 deck. Then he turned a somersault with splash and drepched Us all. He l rose again, ehurning the water white, raised his tail quite 20 feet and slapped 1 the water with a noise like a thunder 1 clap at our very toes. Ne turned round and round, wrapping the rope about l his huge body, then shot straight for ward on the surface, skipping from wave to wave like a swallow. He reached the end of his slack rope with a jerk that shook the ship from stem to stern. There was an instant tug of [ war between the whale and the re- yersed engines. Then the whale won and for minute pulled the vessel for ward with him.
 Again the windlass whirred and whizzed, but with diminishing speed Far out at the end of his two miles of rope, the whale churned and lashed the water and blew big blasts of hot vapor The crew saw the end and relaxed their tenseness. They gave him half an hour or so to end his convulsions. Then the captain shouted the order to wind in the rope.
 As the whale felt the pull he gave one feeble, dying jump The men stopped minute, then continued slowly [ o pull in. Finally. the huge, inert, fabhy body ffoated belly upward, just off the bow. They lowered boat. passed a chain about the narrow circumference where the tail widens, and grappled him to the side of the vessel. l could see dozen quarreling porpoises eat ing the tongue of the monster that had been an hour before alive and, to those scavengers, invincible. The cap tain gave a sigh and smile of content and leaned over the side to measure with his eye the size of his prize. The crew busted themselves with loading the harpoon gun again and putting things in order.
 All this was before five in the morn ind-and before breakfast After the meal. when we came on deck again, there had risen heavy Iceland wind. The captain sniffed it and glanced at the cheppy sea ",Twill be a bad day for the feesh." he said: and went aloft to his bridge to watch with his glass es for another blow" With the wind came rain. and the two did. indeed, make bad fishing. Not that the whales went in out of the wet. IS an irreverent sailor must tell the guileless lands men; there was scarce time when we could not see a dozen "blows" within a fve-mile radius. Often, when we were not prepared for them, they would swim right past us with all the dignity of an ocean liner speeding past a bobhing fishing craft. They never seemed to be merely browsing idly around-theN were always swimming in straight line, and always very fast as if they had important business somewhere on the coast of Sweden. When they were close by we could fol- low them readily with the eve and see them rising and dipping at regular in tervals. Farther off. milestones of their course were their blows" It is the one conspicuous mammal charac- teristic remaining to this eXpatriated land animal who has chosen the en- vironment of fish for his abode: once iii so often he must breathe And as his taking breath involves blowing a 20-foot high pillar of white vapor into the air. it is this mark of the beast" and of the beasts natural habitat that betrays him to his enemies.
 Late in the afternoon the captain on the bridge swept the sea with his glasses. and saw no sign of "blow." He glanced at the sinking sun and measured with his eye the 20 miles to the harbor. He dropped his glasses and gave a quiet order that meant the days work was done. The deck was put in order. and the stocky little whaler. with her trophies grappled close to her side, set her bow towards the mainland. It was not for the want of fish" that we had fisherman's luck that day. But the whaler was no larger than a tugboat. The heavy sea tossed her about like cork. and aim ing cannon with SO unsteady base as the whaler's bow was difficult busi- ness even for the expert captain. Three times he fired and missed: and a it took an hour or two te reload the gun and prepare the harpoOn and bomb. 1t was two o'clock in the after noon before we got our second prize. The process was in all respects like the first; but there was the same frenzy of excitement aboard the ship. The one appetite that never becomes satiated, the one instinct that is never satisfied, the one experience that no amount of repetition dulls, is, it seems, the in- stinet to hunt and kill. In primitive man it was the first law of his being; and, like the whales breathing, it stays with him in a wholly changed environment.
 The captain slowly paced the bridge and putfed a long cigar in profound content l judged, by what he had told me. that his individual share in the days catch would be successful lawyers income for week.-Boston Transcript.