Immediately in front of the house, running into the firth below low-water mark, is the flensing-stage. On the right, looking toward the firth, are the boiler-houses and the plant for reducing blubber to oil. On the left is the shed where the meat and bone are cooked in pots (which remind one of Bessemer furnaces) and brought down by several stages to a finely mixed powder.

The oil goes to soap manufacturers. The powdered meat and bone goes to Japan, for use as fertilizer in the rice-fields. The whalebone, cleaned and cut to lengths, is stowed in sheds before shipment to brush manufacturers. So is each solid portion of the carcass prepared for use. Only the blood escapes, and flows down the flensing-stage in sheets of steaming red, to stain the tide. On fine evenings I have seen the blood-stain burning in the evening glow, a broad trail moving slowly out to sea.

Fifty yards out in the firth, in front of the flensing-stage and to the left of the crazy pier and the coal-hulk, is a red spherical buoy, eight or nine feet in diameter. The buoy has a past. It was a life-buoy, a Norwegian invention. It is hollow, with a manhole at the top, and a padded interior; a portable Black Hole of Calcutta. It was designed for use in shipwreck; passengers were to enter and float off in safety from a sinking ship. Heaven help them in a rough sea. The buoy is what enthusiasts might use for sailing down Niagara. But it has a more practical use at present. The dead whales, when towed in by the whale-catchers, are moored to it. The red sphere is no longer a life-buoy. It is a death-buoy now. There the corpses wait their turn for the flensing-stage.

When the stage is ready, the whales are hauled inshore and up, the heavy winches straining and the tackle singing under the load. When the carcass is in position, the flensing begins. With flensing-knives the size and shape of hockey-sticks, but razor-edged, parallel cuts are made in the hard blubber, from head to tail; and the strips of white blubber — between a foot or eighteen inches wide and (for the fin-whale) four to six inches thick — are pulled off by the winch. It is not easy to cut the blubber; it is of the consistency of a hard rubber ball; it is firm, and your foot rebounds if you kick it.

When the blubber has gone, the jaws are disarticulated and dragged away by the winch. Only then is one likely to appreciate the full magnitude of the whale. The sight of whales at sea is often disappointing. They are usually distant and show but little back. They are lost in the immensity of sky and sea; if seen from a ship, they are compared to the ship and are smaller. Seen from a dory, and in fog, the whale, I have no doubt, would gain in greatness; and a breaching sperm, in those conditions, would not be forgotten. One sees the whole of a dead whale on the flensing-stage, and he dwarfs the men surrounding him; but he is fine in stream-line, splendid in proportion, and one takes him as a monument, a block of matter of fine texture and independent unity. His size is vaguely realized, but he is still compared to larger things, to buildings and to hills.

But strip him of his unifying coat of blubber, remove his shapely jaws, and in the monstrous fraction which remains, he seems larger than he did when whole. The mass of meat, the streams of blood, are compared with meat and blood as known elsewhere; and the mind, thinking in terms of platters and cut fingers, is startled at this enormity.

Although the change of scale is that which Gulliver experienced in Brobdingnag, the coarseness which he found in the Brobdingnagians is not seen in the whale. The skin, wherever gulls leave it unmutilated, is of the finest texture, made up of layers of thin tissue which are translucent and of delicate shades of coloring. In life, it is not possible to state any fixed color for the whale; light and shade and the glistening wetness of the surface give the whale as wide a range of color as the sea’s.

The dead and drying fin-whale shows a gray made up of blues and browns along the back. The sides of the head are differently shaded, the right side light, the left side dark in color. The sides of the body are fawn-colored, merging with a pure brilliant white, whiter than white lead, for the pleated under part. The pleats are delicate and firm; the skin is more lovely to look at than human skin, though repellent to the touch. Where nature has taken the greatest pains with the whale’s skin, as in the lining of the central rib of the palate, it is finer and softer in texture than crape or India silk.

Look on that vast outline once more. Never in the old days could men see the whale, as we can see him now, and say, thus was he made. As the cold naked body is drawn up slowly from the sea, we stand arraigned for all repulsiveness — for the wound, the smell, the swollen tongue and grinning mouth — above all, for the filthy setting of the flensing-stage. Marble would not be good enough to lay this corpse upon; for the sight — discard the blemishes — is wonder. This is the sordid remnant, yet the eye may even now replace what has been lost; it may replace, the while the mind stands by, incredulous. Where went that spirit, which played in this magnificence — which made this mountain leap and sport, quickened the eye, retracted that balloon of tongue, lifted that fallen jaw?

This was a lump which solved some wild equation of the elements. This monstrous form and painted shapeliness has burned its way through phosphorescent waves in summer, the black night lighted by luminous clouds of its own breathing; and sinking with an easy silence, it has spiraled to unseen depths,  upon unknown desires. Akin to mine, his body was, alone among the nations of the sea. Here he lies, the wanderer, received on earth. The body rotting in its death should now be ugly. It is more lovely and more startling than the Sphinx. I would not suffer Aristotle to see its nakedness. Either a dull fellow, or Leonardo. The one could never see; the other could abide his feeling.

The corpse soon disappears. Under the long-handled flensing-knives skin and meat and all is reduced to soiled masses, which are drawn to the buckets which carry the portions up to the cooking-pots. After a few hours of steady work by the flensing- gang, nothing is left of the carcass but the vertebræ, as large as millstones. The circular saw shrieks as it bites into these vertebræ; at last they are severed and join the meat for cooking. So ends the story of the flensing-stage….

It was eight o’clock when I was roused by the steward. He said one word, and went away. “Hval!” I tumbled out, crammed my feet into boots, and ran forward after him. The clouds were parted now, and a weak sun showing through them. The steward had disappeared; I hurried up the ladder to the bridge.

After all, it was a myth. There was no whale. The mate at the wheel peered forward anxiously.  The gunner was at the bow, his hand on the stock of the gun. The lookout man was hanging half outside the barrel on the mast. But there was no whale. Visibility was excellent. I searched the surface of the sea to port, ahead, and starboard of us. Here it was blue; there it was brown; but nothing anywhere alive and visible. If there was a whale surely all eyes should be focused on its whereabouts. But the mate clearly did not know where to look. The gunner did not know where to look. The lookout man was gazing from side to side, uncertainly. And the sea danced and sparkled, and was merry and clean and uninhabited. The sun was gaining strength, making for a patch of watery blue sky; behind us lay a long low bank of dark gray cloud, with the horizon a clean black line beneath it. Whale or no, it was a good day, a better day than I had seen in Shetland. The wind was brisk, but . . .

I was interrupted.

“Blaast!” cried the lookout man. His arm and rigid finger shot out to the left. The gunner swung his gun round; the mate spun the helm hard over, and rang the telegraph for full speed. The Sheba lurched into the wind, and pounded and trembled as if with excitement.

But I saw nothing. Five minutes passed, and with the others I stared and ranged the whitecaps, not knowing where to look. Then, on the starboard bow,  perhaps two hundred yards away, I saw two puffs of smoke. They were thin, tenuous, and hung for a moment in the wind. I pointed. The mate saw at the same instant. “Blaast,” he shouted, tearing at the spokes to swing the helm. The gunner turned and shouted in Norwegian (“Where away?” or, “How far?”), and the mate called back to him. The gunner swung the gun, the lookout craned forward, and the steward and a stoker jabbered on the deck below. They were to stand by the winches, for the chase was really on.

“Finhval,” said the mate. “Two of them, big ones. You bring us luck. Maybe we get good shot soon.” I was pleased. I thought of telling him a Jonah was useful on a whale-catcher. A number of irrelevancies occurred to me. I was excited by the excitement of the men round me. For myself, I did not yet believe in the chase. It seemed unimportant. Nothing would really happen. The sea was blue now. There was a solitary sea-gull following us; his eye was hard as a black boot-button.

But the fin-whales — they were shy and far away. They cruised erratically, changing course below the surface. The spouts appeared, one after the other, now here, now there, now here. It was a game. After an hour we were as close, no closer, to the puffs which rose, always close together, like irresponsible play of a will-o’-the-wisp. The puffs betrayed no agitation, no hurry, no reality. We turned, we twisted, raced forward, stopped dead; the puffs appeared ahead, on either side, once or twice astern.

Sometimes they were lost. The wheel spun round. The smoke from the Sheba‘s funnel drifted now to port, now to starboard; sometimes astern, sometimes ahead. The telegraph rang, and rang again. The gunner talked to himself and to the crew in angry guttural tones. The mate cursed fitfully by my ear. The men were anxious, shifty, and determined. Cold and tiredness no longer mattered. I saw no reason why the game should not go on forever. At intervals the spouts rose from the lumpy blue sea. We backed and heeled and raced after them. The sea-gull veered and glided after us. The day was glorious. I forgot any thought of the ending of the chase. We had to catch up with the spouts. Nothing else mattered; that was the intense and vivid game, to catch up with the spouts.

4.  I had lost all expectation of end, yet the end came swiftly. Several times in the second hour we had been close to the spouts; we had seen the whales themselves, within a hundred yards, within eighty, even within half that distance. But action had never followed, and I began to take this nearness as a matter of course.

Then came the end. Thirty yards ahead the blue  waves parted; the gray jet shot up with its painful powerful sigh (I knew the sound; it was the one made by the valves of the Underground lifts, when one comes to the top at Piccadilly Circus); the wet arched brown back and dorsal fin rose leisurely and prepared to sink — as it had done a score of times before. The gunner leaned forward to his gun, closer than he had leaned all morning. None breathed. The moment lengthened interminably. Still I did not take it seriously.

Suddenly came a shout from the masthead, startling, agonized in its intensity. The gunner heard, and shouted back, never rising from the gun, but waving his left arm behind him frantically. The mate heard, and rang the engines to “astern.” “There! There!” he cried; “the other one!”

I woke then. I shook with pain, for I suddenly knew. The first whale disappeared, but closer, much closer — twenty yards ahead — another clean brown body shone underneath the surface, as through glass. The white of its under side glimmered green. It was coming up; it seemed directly underneath our bows. The Sheba shivered as the screw kicked under her and we strove to avoid collision.

The motion of the whale was slowed down by the intensity of sight. I saw his closed jaws, the pleats along his under side, his long, slim, slender tail, the corkscrew movement of his flukes. His head rose, shattering a wave; his spout exploded with its sighing snore; the cloud of breath swept across the bridge, leaving an acrid smell. The rounded broad brown back arched upward in horrible ignorance. It never twitched; I thought it might have twitched. Smooth and hard and clean, shining in the sun, the living back heaved forward. The fin appeared, leisurely rolling onward. The gunner must have forgotten. Maybe the gun had jammed. In another long moment this whale too would roll under and vanish.

There was a roar, a flash of yellow flame. The Sheba reeled. From the bows sprang flying wads and whirling coils of the manila line. The smoke was driven backward by the wind; it stung my eyes.

Neither more hurriedly nor more deliberately than before, the back rolled on and disappeared. The sea boiled over it. On the disturbed green circle of the whale’s wake was a streak of red. The Sheba plunged heavily forward toward the red stain; the tackle on the mast screamed, and the blocks ran down toward the winches. The winches rattled with sudden violence. Steam spat from them; the drums revolved. The gunner flung the gun round, left the platform.

Though her engines were working astern, the Sheba continued to lurch and roll forward. On the deck all was action. Men were at the winches, two deck-hands busy with the gun, a seaman hauling heavy clanking chains across the iron deck. The gunner came up to the bridge. He took the wheel. The knuckles of his left hand were bleeding. Watching the straining yellow line, he shouted to the men below.

“He comes up,” said the mate, aside to me.

The winches clattered and raced. The blocks on the mast ran aloft. The line sagged. I looked down, saw a dim shape spiraling upward toward the surface. The shape defined itself; once more the sea parted; the head shot clear, straight up this time, the fringed jaws gaping, the jet pumping red. In the effort to rise and spend this blood upon the air, the lungs burst, and the animal fell backward on a rising sea; fell with its flippers twitching, and was dead. The gunner pushed the telegraph to “stop.”

As we lay in the trough of the sea, I looked across the empty waves. Far off was a single puff of smoke, a drifting vanishing trace of the companion whale, moving away alone. The sea-gull too had disappeared. We remained, with the dead.

“See,” said the mate, touching my arm; “he sinks.” As I turned the line was at an angle, tightening. The blurred body shone far down in the water, wan and green. The angle of the rope grew sharper. Sight of the body was lost. I searched the sea for blood; the stain had disappeared. Scarlet spirals here and there flecked the waves. They were excrement.

Down below the bows hung seventy tons of fresh meat. The Sheba‘s gun was close to the surface, her stern lifted into the air. The sea spanked her exposed flank. The winch was working slowly, the tackle creaking and squealing again. Foot by foot the body came up, twisting slowly, hidden by the bows.

The mate took the wheel. I clambered down to the deck after the gunner, who took a twenty-foot lance from its place by the ratlines. The dead whale lay at last at the surface. The winches were locked. The gunner, balancing once more on the gun-platform, plunged the lance into the firm white surface of the stomach. With another lance, he passed down the nozzle of a compressed air hose. The leaping of the sea, the awkward swaying of the carcass, made it difficult to find the previous incision. At last the nozzle was inserted and pushed home with an effort. The air was turned on. Slowly the corpse began to swell and rise. The tackle ceased to strain. The Sheba‘s bow lifted; her stern squatted down once more. twenty minutes the carcass was inflated. In another ten minutes the flukes were cut away, a chain passed through and round the stumps of tail, and the whale moored alongside for towing….

3. While we are hunting — there is plenty of time — I ought to describe the method of killing we were anxious to put into action. The industry of whaling had reached such a high state of organization that if those who hunted the sperm and right whale in their courageously primitive fashion years ago could only see the elaborate preparations and gear that are used at the present time, they would be considerably astonished.

The modern harpoon-gun is an ingenious piece of mechanism, something like an old-fashioned cannon in appearance. The method of loading by the muzzle is similar to the practice of the time of Nelson. First is inserted something like a pound of gunpowder wrapped in a linen bag; then follow a few handfuls of cotton waste and oakum. After this packing, a round flat piece of rubber, about an inch in thickness and of the same diameter as the bore of the gun, is rammed home. The cotton waste, oakum, and rubber pad serve as a shock-absorber so as to prevent the explosion from bending the shaft of the harpoon.

The harpoon has about it many points of interest. Its weight (as near as I could judge from lifting it) is about one hundred pounds. It is barbed so that when the harpoon enters the body of the whale the prongs expand laterally, making the grip of the harpoon firmer against the struggles of the leviathan to get away.

Serving as a head, a grenade with a contact detonator attached is screwed upon the front of the harpoon. These grenades, which have proved their extreme usefulness, have been increased in size, so that they now resemble, both in shape and size, the twenty- pound bombs that caused so much destruction when dropped from aëroplanes during the war.

The shaft of the harpoon is slotted to allow a strong loop of several thicknesses of piano-wire, twisted into a shape like a figure 8, to be threaded through so that it slides along the whole length from the head to the base.

Attached to the loop of piano-wire is the forerunner, a strong rope of hemp with a breaking-strain of sixty tons. The forerunner is coiled up neatly on a platform immediately below the gun, so that it may easily follow in the wake of the harpoon when fired.

At the other end of the forerunner is spliced the whale-line proper, made of the finest manila, 240 fathoms in length. With a breaking-strain of the same capacity as the forerunner, this cable runs over and under rollers beneath the gunner’s platform, up through a complicated piece of tackle called the accumulator-block, thence round the winch-rollers, and so down through the deck, where it lies neatly coiled in a locker so as to allow it to run out at great speed without chance of jamming.

The moment the harpoon strikes the whale, the animal dives, and, if it is not killed immediately, races ahead of the catcher, dragging the rope with it. The accumulator-block now comes into action. It is a pulley-block suspended about half-way up the mast on a steel cable, which in turn runs up the mast over a pulley-block, and then down the mast, and through the deck, where it is firmly fastened to a series of spiral springs. The idea of this arrangement is that the accumulator-block takes the sudden strain of the whale-line when the whale is struck by the harpoon, and in the subsequent struggles the block runs down the mast when the strain increases, pulling all the time on the springs, and goes back to its normal position when the tension slackens.

In spite of this ingenious contrivance the whale, if it is a strong animal, sometimes manages to pull the entire length of the line out of the ship, causing great anxiety lest the line should break. A further method of checking the mad career of the wounded animal is in the way the whale-line is wound round the steam winches, which have extremely powerful brakes in contact with the rope. I have seen the hard wooden brake-blocks actually smoking with the friction caused as the whale-line runs through them, for the leverage exerted on them is tremendous by reason of the tackling that is attached.

The distance at which a gunner may try his skill in shooting the whale varies considerably, and I have seen some wonderful shots made. One in particular went the full distance of the forerunner, thirty yards. The most spectacular have always been in rough weather when it was barely possible to stand on deck, much less hit a swiftly moving target, snap-shot fashion, after standing on the gunner’s platform for an hour or so, all the while drenched with icy-cold spray. Sometimes the gunner misses, but not often. When he does miss he usually gives up the chase immediately and allows the whale to get away.

I am of the opinion that there are a large number of whales in the Antarctic that will never be caught, as they have had their initiation into the playful intentions of mankind and are very loath to repeat the experience, self-preservation being, in all probability, just as strong an instinct in them, after years of the chase, as in other animals of the wild which have learned of the two-legged animal’s destructive powers. …

I had not very long to wait, for soon I saw what looked to me like the blowing of a whale, and shouting in my best Norse the signal, “Da-er-blaast,” I pointed in the direction where I had seen the quarry. The ship rapidly swung in the line indicated, and my responsibility then ended, but I had a most wonderful view of the chase. There were five whales in all, and as we got near I noticed that one in particular separated himself from the rest and was paying us more than the usual amount of attention.

It was rather a small beast and for this reason hardly worth the trouble of chasing, in view of the more profitable quarry in sight. So we kept to the hunt, incidentally allowing our too venturesome whale to exercise his curiosity to his own satisfaction, which he did, swimming along, just under the water, first on the port side, then on the starboard, and then just behind the propeller. I watched his maneuvers with great interest, for although he was below the water, I could very plainly follow his movements. Once he swam right across our bows, and I shouted what was happening immediately below to Andersen, who was standing by with his gun on the platform, but he was just too late to get a sight. So, seemingly without the smallest effort, the whale glided by the bows, to continue his examination of the ship’s hull from another angle.

After a short time, round he came again, and this time Andersen brought off one of the most remarkable shots I ever saw. Pointing the harpoon straight down, he fired, just as the whale passed underneath; and the harpoon, traveling straight through the water to its mark, ended the whale’s curiosity for all time.

It was an excellent shot, for Andersen could not have seen the whale clearly, but only a blurred mass; and even then there was the refraction of the water to be taken into account.

An air-pump was quickly inserted to blow up the carcass and so keep the whale afloat, and a pole flying the company’s flag was stuck in the thick blubber to mark our property; the custom is followed to avoid confusion and to avoid the possibility of picking up some other company’s whale. The flag also serves as a mark to enable one’s property to be spotted at a distance. This proceeding finished, off we went again after the other whales.

It was not long before we sighted them and were carefully stalking them again; and as usual, when we drew near, our pace was slowed down, and with the engines barely turning over we selected the largest whale of the group as the next victim.

From my position in the barrel I could plainly see and also hear the whale blowing great jets of steaming breath from its blow-hole. The sound I find most difficult to describe — just the sound of air and water being forced under great pressure through a small hole in a short space of time. As I watched, the great beast suddenly came up to the surface only about twenty yards from our bow, and traveling with an easy lazy motion aslant and away from us. Andersen crouched behind his gun, and for a moment an eery silence seemed to reign. The engines stopped throbbing, and still Andersen did not fire, and the whale sank down below the surface. In my ignorance I thought of a beautiful opportunity missed, but in a space of seconds up came the whale again, and still nearer. Again Andersen crouched, and everything seemed to stop still. Then with the roar of the gun a cloud of smoke hid the bow and whale from view.

When the smoke cleared the whale was not to be seen. It had gone deep down into the sea, mortally stricken, carrying the harpoon deeply embedded. The line attached to the harpoon was running out into the sea in the wake of the whale, very fast in spite of the brake-tension upon it. Orders were shouted to increase the pace of the ship, and the tension on the whale-line gradually slackened; but only just in time, as we were actually getting to the end of 240 fathoms of line.

With incredible strength the whale went ahead, towing the Southern Maid after it. Then its wound began to tell, and the whale-line was hauled in, so that we gradually overhauled our quarry once more. The great brute was now blowing into the air a mixture of blood and water, a sure sign that it was nearly spent. It kept to the surface and made no further attempt to dive below in the effort to rid itself of its dreadful burden.

As the whale got weaker we gained ground till we were near enough for another shot; for a second shot was necessary to save time. The second harpoon was immediately effective; and then followed the usual process of pumping the carcass up with air, making it fast to the bows, and so away.

I was greatly surprised to find it had taken more than three hours to complete the kill from the time the first harpoon had been fired. This seems to me a striking tribute to the gigantic strength and vitality of these animals.

I now felt I might relieve myself from the cramped position in the barrel and prepared to descend. It was an easier task getting down than mounting, as by this time I had got used to the height and felt more at home. I had seen Arnold take the quickest way down to deck by sliding down the guy-rope, but although this was a speedy and spectacular route I preferred the more orthodox but laborious way. There was no difficulty in changing from the ladder to the ratlines, as the weight of the whale served to steady the ship, thus saving me from the buffeting I had received in getting up to the lookout.