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Updated: May 17, 2025
The same holds in regard to wild-fowl or deer. If a dead seal is found with a harpoon sticking in it, the finder keeps the seal, but restores the harpoon to the owner. The harpooner of a walrus claims the head and tail, while any one may take away as much as he can carry of the carcass. But when a whale is captured, the harpooners have no special advantage.
A minute later it flies from his hand, and is buried deep into the body of the quivering animal, cutting through the thick blubber as a razor would cut through the skin of a drum. "'Stern all! and the harpooner tumbles aft and grips the steer oar, and the steersman takes his place in the head of the boat and seizes his keen-edged lance.
Numerous pieces of wood were floating to leeway, clashing with noise; a few enormous, bloated-headed sharks approached the vessel, but there was no question of chasing them, although Simpson, the harpooner, was longing to have a hit at them. Towards evening several seals made their appearance, nose above water, swimming between the blocks.
Just as the whale was curving himself to sound, we got fairly close, and the harpooner made a "pitch-pole" dart; that is, he hurled his weapon into the air, where it described a fine curve, and fell point downward on the animal's back just as he was disappearing. He stopped his descent immediately, and turned savagely to see what had struck him so unexpectedly. At that moment the sun went down.
At eight o'clock the mist rolled ponderously over the waves, and its huge curls were lifting little by little. The horizon grew wider and clearer all at once. Suddenly, just as on the previous evening, Ned Land's voice was audible. "There's the thing in question, astern to port!" the harpooner shouted. Every eye looked toward the point indicated.
Consequently we mustered the halt and the lame, and manned two boats all we could do leaving the almost useless cripples to handle the ship. Not to displace the rightful harpooner, I took an oar in one of them, headed by the captain. At first my hopes were high that we should not succeed in reaching the victim before dark, but I was grievously disappointed in this.
"Blowed up with gunpowder, and shattered to a thousand pieces," said Tom Lokins, raising his voice with excitement, as he read from his paper an account of the blowing up of a mountain fortress in India. "Oh! come, I say, one at a time, if you please," cried a harpooner; "a feller can't git a word of sense out of sich a jumble."
I am told that guns are now used with which to send the harpoon into the whale's body, while in my time it was driven by sheer strength and dexterity of arm, as the harpooner stood up at his full height in the bow of the tossing whale-boat, close to the huge monster, one blow of whose tail is sufficient to dash her into atoms.
He seized me by the hair, drew me to my feet, and lifted the knife to plunge to my heart. And there was no resistance in me. I knew again only that I was very thirsty, and before my swimming eyes, in mid-air and close up, dangled the sanded tongue of the harpooner. "But before the knife could fall and drive in, the thing happened that saved me.
The old harpooner and I lived together on the best terms for a month, during which we seldom quitted the cabin of the vessel, having now drawn down the third dead body, which we cut up as we required it with less difficulty than before, from the change in the weather.
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