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Show THE OLD HARPOONER. A Bit of the Poetry That Has Gone Oat of Whaling UfV The gallant seaman v." " ' all the books stands in the prow jYThaling boat waving a harpoon ovj. his head, with the line snaking out into the air behind him, is only to be found now in Paternoster row. The Greenland seas have not known him for more than a hundred years, since first the obvious proposition was advanced tt one could shoot both harder and nuJPaccurately than one coula throw, iho swivel gun, like a huge horse pistol, with its great oakum wad and 28 drams of powder, is a more reliable but a fr - less picturesque pictur-esque object. But to aim with such A gun is an art in itself, as will be scUhen one considers con-siders that the rope iJfSned to the neck of a harpoon, and Tat as the missile mis-sile flies the downward drag of this rope must seriously deflect it. So difficult is it to make sure of one'S aim, that it is the etiquette of the trade to pull the boat right onto the creature, the prow shooting up its soft, gently sloping side and the harpooner firing straight down into its broad back, into which not only the four foot harpoon but 10 feet of the rope behind it will disappear. Then, should the whale cast its tail in the air after the time honored fashion of the pictures, that boat would be in evil case, but fortunately when frightened or hurt it does no such thing, but curls its tail up underneath it, like k cowed dog, and sinks like a Btone. iThen the bows splash back into the wfffier, the harpooner harpoon-er hugs his own soul, the crow light their pipes and keep heir legs apart, while the line runs nWrily down the middle of the boat afidover the bows. There are two miles of it there, and a second boat will lie alongside to splice on if the first should inn short, the end being always kept loose for that purpose. pur-pose. And now occurs the one serious danger of whaling. The line has usually usu-ally been coiled when it was wet, and aa it runs out it is very liable to come Xjoploopa., whichj-Evbiz Jswa ... tbe boat in one oi these n(jtte3 itf gone anufifty fathoms deep befuwtbei harpooner has time to say, "WhUsg's Jock?" Or if it be the boat itself iiich is caught then down it goes lika tfL-oTk on a trout line, and the man v. ho can swim with a whaler's high bclots on is a swimmer indeed. in-deed. Many a phalo has had a Parthian Par-thian revenge iu this fashion. Some years ago a man was whisked over with a bight of rope round his thigh. "George, man, Alec's gonel" shrieked the boat steerer, heaving up his ax to cut the line. Bat the harpooner caught his wrist. "Na, na, nmn," he cried, "the oil money'll be a good thing for the widdie." And so it was arranged while Alec shot on upon his terrible journey. A. Conan Doyle in McClure's Magazine. |