The Coconino sun., 1903-02-28
WHALE HUNTING
 By MARK SULLIVAN.
LIE was a Norwegian, but his sea

LII English was as good as the kings.
 He was big and muscular, with rare combination of weight and wiriness.
 His face and eyes were stern enough when he shouted orders from the bridge, but, when playing the host in his cabin, as merry as a Santa Claus without the whiskers. His skin was
 tanned by the salt spray and burned by the sun of every degree of latitude where ships have ever been. He had
 caught whales in every sea, from the Persian gulf to Baffin's bay; and . few years ago he abandoned the old way of New Bedford and all romance-the three-year-long, round the world cruise in a sailing vessel-to try the adaptation of steam to whaling. For the big brick oven on the deck to boil know The Cruise of the Cachalot) he substituted a permanent factory for refining the oil, located on the north ern shore of Newfoundland. From this he steamed out to the whaling grounds each morning and back at night, rare- ly without prize. For the old method of throwing harpoon by hand from small boat he substituted harpoon gun from the bow of his whaler; and with these improvements conducted a business that will soon make the few surviving New Bedford sailing whalers as obsolete as wooden blows.
 I lay in his spare bunk, across the
 T. dropped to sleep as he finished a tale, strangely like Kipling's "Three Seal ers," of a fight between rival crews for a dead whale in the Okhotsk sea- Only a minute later, it seemed. I bumped my head against the top of the bunk to the quick awakening of an excited Norwegian craft cry from the top of the companionway. Thecaptain leaped from his bunk. He waited not for shoes nor for other clothes than those he selpt in. but bounded up the steps. shouting orders as he --r. While I dressed ciuld feel the Q ok stopping. the short advances and retreats of the engines. and I knew we were stalking game. When reached the deck the captain had one hand on the gun. swinging it about on its pivot. With the other he was making signals to the engineer to stop, to go toward little or to go back. Following his eyes, caught sight of our game. It looked like huge. cigar-shaped piece of tmooth. shiny slate-colored India rub Der, rising at regular intervals so that four or five feet of his diameter and 40 feet of his length showed like mound on the smooth water. With alternate rising and dipping he was gliding smoothly forward, without apparent exertion, but with tremendous speed, and in a perfectly straight line. We were approaching him from behind at an angle, so that his course and ours were the sides of W.
 The captain on the raised platform in the bow. following with the mouth of his cannon the course of the whale, was the personification of alertness. The crew were grouped behind him as eager and expectant as if they had never caught whale before. One of ehSh poucuOu thC thic SIlOuluST dnU pointed silently a mile away, where a dozen other whales were spouting fine columns of vapor. When I turne again to our whale he had risen once more, and we were within 30 feet of him. Every person on the ship was in . state of tiptoe alertness. Suddenly came the crash of the gun. Isaw hid eous red zigzag gash on the broad side of the whale; heard the rumbling roar of the time bomb at the point of the harpoon exploding in the whales vitals. On deck there was . convulsive pandemonium. The captain, in the de- lirium of the hunter at the death of his quarry, was shrieking shrill staccato orders. The crew were leaping to their posts. Suddenly felt the bow of the vessel give a jerk beneath me. then tremble moment, and slowly dip.