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Updated: June 13, 2025
We at last got within a few feet of the monster, and the captain suddenly gave the word, "Stand up." This was to our harpooner, Tom Lokins, who jumped up on the instant, and buried two harpoons deep in the blubber. "Stern all!" was the next word, and we backed off with all our might.
It was, however, too far off for the harpoons of the Indians to reach it. We followed, they intimating that we should very likely come up with it. We had not gone far, when they ceased rowing and pointed ahead.
And when they went out to play together, it would break the children's toy harpoons to pieces, but whenever it wanted to give any one of the children a push, it would always sheathe its claws. But at last it grew so strong, that it nearly always made the children cry.
The gymnoti approach timidly the edge of the marsh, where they are taken by means of small harpoons fastened to long cords. When the cords are very dry the Indians feel no shock in raising the fish into the air. In a few minutes we had five large eels, most of which were but slightly wounded. Some others were taken, by the same means, towards evening.
Two or three times a day, parties armed with guns and harpoons and accompanied by all their Greenland dogs landed on the ice bank, and surrounded the sleeping monsters at the mouth of their holes. They killed them by firing a ball into their ears, then they cut them up, and placed the lard with which they were filled in their sleighs, and the dogs drew it to the "Alaska."
Often he would be surrounded by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pikeheads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance did come from him.
Many harpoons have been found in the caves of the south of France; others come from Belgium, from Keyserloch in Germany, Kent's Hole in England, from Conches, Wauwyl, and Concise in Switzerland. On the banks of the Uswiata, a little Polish river flowing into the Dnieper, two harpoons made out of the horns of some bovine animal were found, both in perfect preservation, and with several barbs.
They hurried and fastened a rather small rope on to each harpoon, in the way a rope ought to be fastened to a harpoon, and two of the sailors took the two harpoons and went down under the bowsprit, in among the chains that go from the end of the bowsprit to the stem of the ship. They went there so as to be near the water. They might get wet there, but they didn't care about that.
But "The Crossed Harpoons," and "The Sword-Fish?" this, then must needs be the sign of "The Trap." However, I picked myself up and hearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door. It seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a pulpit.
"He had no sooner disappeared in his great clumsy craft, laden with seines and harpoons, and baskets and jugs, than a whispering began among the boys, a sad sort of sighing and crying, almost like the whispering of wind in the tree-tops, which changed again to looks and glances of surprise as a beautiful vessel with silken sails floated up to the wharf, and a lovely, gracious-looking lady clothed in white stepped from the boat, and came rapidly towards them.
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