Nearer and nearer creeps the captain's boat. The excitement is intense. Will the whale dive before he gets close enough, the men are wondering?
"Lie on your oars, men! Still and quiet!"
The boat drifts a little way further, but the gun is trained.
The echoes reverberate from every berg, or far or near. The line all neatly coiled in the bows is whirling out, till the gunwale begins to fire. But it as speedily stops.
Grand shot! The monster is struck, and for a few seconds seems stunned, and lies still on the top of the water.
The school has dived and disappeared, to come up somewhere again miles and miles away.
And now the wounded whale recovers from the shot, and headlong dives, the line rushing out once again as before. Under way once again is the boat, but the leviathan now reappears as suddenly as he had sunk. Some instinct--whether of scent or hearing I cannot tell--causes him to take the same course as his fellows.
Mercy on us, how he rips and tears through the black-green water! But ever and anon he dives, and it is evident his exertions weary him a little.
And now the line is all run out, and the boat is taken in charge. The gunwale is cooled with hastily-drawn buckets of water, and forward she dashes, so quickly too that a wall of water stands up on each side of the bows.
The poor monster is in torment. The chief danger to the boat itself would lie in the beast swerving aside and diving under a berg, which would dash the brave whaler to pieces, and kill or drown every man on board. But he holds his course till, weary at last, he dives once more, and there remains for fully twenty minutes.
When he again appears the water around is red with his blood, but he moves along very slowly now, and the other boats with their lancemen get abreast and bear up to head him.
Duncan's is the first to get near enough, and now comes the tug of war. The whale is sick and weak.
The lance is driven in full many and many a foot, and with one decisive twist a great and vital artery is severed.
"Back water all! For life, boys, for life!"
For life? Yes, but the men are as cool as if rowing in a regatta on the Thames.
The blood spouts high as if from a fire-hose, but in awful jets, with every throb of the giant's heart. There is life in him yet, and while the red-drenched seamen pull well out of the way, he lashes the ocean's surface with his tremendous tail, one blow from which would stave in a torpedo-boat.