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Updated: June 13, 2025
It takes a monster quite a few minutes to tumble to the fact that it's been killed. My helper was pounding my back black and blue with one hand and trying to pump mine off with the other, and I was getting an ovation from all over the ship. At the same time, a couple more harpoons went into the thing from the ship, and the boat put another one in from behind.
A low rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back into the deep.
Thenceforward the navigation was free from difficulty, or at least none that we could recognize as such, so we gave all our attention to the business which brought us there. Scarcely any change was needed in our equipment, except the substitution of longer harpoons for those we had been using, and the putting away of the bomb-guns.
All hands were immediately called up; every man was at his post, making ready for the coming scene of action; not as a man-of-war, in the charging of cannon, the priming of musketry, and the brandishing of swords, a battle between man and man, but the boats were lowered, the harpoons were got out, and everything was made ready for an encounter with the monster of the ocean.
This was done by first lashing the tail, by means of holes cut through it, to the bows of a boat, and then two boats swept round it, each with the end of a line, the centre of which was allowed to sink under the fish. As the lines hung down perpendicularly, they were thus brought up and cut as close as possible down to the harpoons, which were left sticking in the back of the fish.
He looked at the several pictures of ships battling with terrible storms, and at the pensive porcupine in its dusty glass case, and then at the array of firearms and harpoons above the door of the press bed. My dog Selta lay sound asleep upon a large polar-bear skin before the fire.
The whale, when nearly exhausted, was allowed to remain some minutes unmolested, till, having recovered some degree of energy, it made a violent effort and tore itself away from the harpoons. The exertions of the crews thus proved fruitless, and were attended with serious loss.
When it re-appeared harpoons and lances were at once driven into it, and it was killed almost immediately. This is not always the result of such an encounter, for this elephant of the polar seas is naturally a ferocious brute, and when bulls are attacked they are prone to show fight rather than take fright.
As we had been looking out for fish for some time past, everything was in readiness for them. The boats were hanging over the side ready to lower, tubs for coiling away the ropes, harpoons, lances, etcetera, all were ready to throw in, and start away at a moment's notice.
'Then there was a hunt! The harpoons were plunged into the walruses' breasts, and the steaming blood spurted out of them like fountains over the ice. Then I remembered my part of the game! I blew up and made my ships, the mountain-high icebergs, nip the boats; whew! how they whistled and how they screamed, but I whistled louder.
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