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Updated: May 1, 2025
"That's a whale, Torry," Whistler declared, breaking off in a military tune to make the observation. "You should have harpooned it." "I'm going to get him aboard here if I swamp the boat!" declared Torry with vigor. The boys were so interested in his playing the fish for the next ten minutes that they did not cast a glance shoreward.
But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions.
While this was taking place on board the Red Eric, a precisely similar scene occurred on board the other whale-ship, and a race now ensued between the boats of the two ships, for each knew well that the first boat that harpooned either of the whales claimed it.
Now she is heard approaching under the floor of the hut, breathing heavily; now she emerges at the hole; now she is harpooned and sinks away in angry haste, dragging the harpoon with her, while the two men hold on to the line with all their might. The struggle is severe, but at last by a desperate wrench she tears herself away and returns to her dwelling in Adlivun.
"Heavens," I thought, "I shall be harpooned for a certainty!" Obviously the rest of the room thought so too, and they all waited expectantly. It was a tense moment something had to be done and done quickly. An inspiration came to me.
Grey cricket, Decticus, Epeirus or Truxalis, sooner or later all are harpooned, held motionless between the saw-edges of the arms, and deliciously crunched at leisure. The process deserves a detailed description. At the sight of a great cricket, which thoughtlessly approaches along the wire-work of the cover, the Mantis, shaken by a convulsive start, suddenly assumes a most terrifying posture.
T. Ward, in his Rambles of an Australian Naturalist page 153, relates that in 1889 he harpooned a large dolphin, Grampus gris, in King George's Sound, and that whalers told him that dolphins were at one time common in the Bight, in schools of two and three hundred. So also in 1705 a voyager to Maryland related the capture of dolphins, "a beautiful fish to see...it is also a good fish to eat."
After we left the ship, another boat was lowered to attack some sea-lions, which had been observed on a rock a little way off. We saw our shipmates commencing the attack as we went up the hill. Several were harpooned. One huge monster, notwithstanding a severe wound, managed to make his escape.
We are all familiar with the couplet from Oppian: Nature her bounty to his mouth confined, Gave him a sword, but left unarmed his mind. It surely seems as if temporary insanity sometimes takes possession of the fish. It is not strange that when harpooned it should retaliate by attacking its assailant. An old swordfisherman told Mr. Blackman that his vessel had been struck twenty times.
In order to facilitate the children's studies, he presented them with an engraved geography which represented various scenes of the world: cannibals with feather head-dresses, a gorilla kidnapping a young girl, Arabs in the desert, a whale being harpooned, etc. Paul explained the pictures to Félicité. And, in fact, this was her only literary education.
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