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At once the boats were lowered from both ships, and we went after this fish, but his motions were so violent, that we found it utterly impossible to get near enough to throw a harpoon. When we had approached somewhat closely, we discovered that it had been attacked by a killer fish, which was fully twenty feet long, and stuck to it like a leech.
Whaling gear was set up along the railings. Our chief officer loaded the blunderbusses, which can launch harpoons as far as a mile, and long duck guns with exploding bullets that can mortally wound even the most powerful animals. Ned Land was content to sharpen his harpoon, a dreadful weapon in his hands.
Letting out more slack on the rope attached to the harpoon a bight of it was passed through a sheave-block at the masthead, thus giving a greater purchase for the lifting of the heavy body. The winch was run by a small donkey-engine, and for about ten minutes the line was hauled in, fathom after fathom being coiled on the deck.
He is a thief and stole my harpoon: you are an honest man and brought it back. I reckon I'll deal with you and not with that old cuss; not by a jugful! But it must be on a percentage. You tell me the bearings of that there island, and I'll work it and pay five per cent on the gross." "Would you mind throwing that piece of wood into the sea, Mr. Fullalove?" said Robert. "Caen't be done, nohow.
"It's sensational," she said disdainfully. Martin shook his head. "I don't think that's enough. The Harpoon, like lots of other newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows inevitably.
But Macko, although he knew that there was the old lady, Sieciechowa, at Zgorzelice, who could easily fulfil Jagienka's duties, did not persuade her to remain, for he knew that sorrow does not like the light on human tears, and that a man is like a fish, when it feels the penetrating harpoon in its body it sinks to the depths.
Then, in a flash, the man in the bow is up on his feet, with the harpoon so poised that the rocking water, the mettlesome canoe, and his watchful comrade in the stern, all form part of the concentrated energy with which he brings his every faculty to a single point of instantaneous action.
Since then I have battled with salmon in northern waters, I have felt my line strain under the tarpon's despair, I have heard my reel sing with the rushes of the bass, yet I do not believe that a whale with my harpoon in his side, as he thrashes the sea, would give me the same exulting thrill that came with a tiny trout's first tug at my hook.
Late that afternoon Jimmy wounded a seal on an ice pan, and it went into the water. He seized a harpoon, but when the seal rose to the surface it was so far away that the line could not reach it. "Here!" shouted Bobby, laying down his gun and grabbing a paddle which he had brought from Itigailit Island for such an emergency, "jump on this pan. I'll paddle you out where you can get him."
He had a leg broken, and a severe wound in the side from a harpoon which had been forced into the flesh over the barbs, so that we could hardly get it drawn out. We laid him in the stern of the boat, where he lay for some time insensible; but in a short time he revived, and spoke to us in a faint voice. His first words were: "I'm dying, messmates. It is into my life, too."
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