Fighting the Whales

Fighting the Whales, by R. M.
Ballantyne

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Ballantyne
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Title: Fighting the Whales
Author: R. M. Ballantyne

Release Date: April 22, 2007 [eBook #21202]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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THE WHALES***
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FIGHTING THE WHALES
by
R. M. BALLANTYNE

[Illustration: Cover Art]

Blackie & Son Ltd. London ---- Glasgow ---- Bombay 1915

CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. IN TROUBLE, TO BEGIN WITH II. AT SEA III. OUR FIRST
BATTLE IV. "CUTTING IN" THE BLUBBER AND "TRYING OUT"
THE OIL V. A STORM, A MAN OVERBOARD, AND A RESCUE
VI. THE WHALE--FIGHTING BULLS, ETC. VII. TOM'S
WISDOM--ANOTHER GREAT BATTLE VIII. DEATH ON THE
SEA IX. NEWS FROM HOME--A GAM X. RETURN HOME

ILLUSTRATIONS
Fighting the Whales . . . . . . Cover Art
"Tom Lokins raised the harpoon"
"Hurled it blazing into the sea"

"In a moment I was overboard"

FIGHTING THE WHALES
CHAPTER I
IN TROUBLE, TO BEGIN WITH
There are few things in this world that have filled me with so much
astonishment as the fact that man can kill a whale! That a fish, more
than sixty feet long, and thirty feet round the body; with the bulk of
three hundred fat oxen rolled into one; with the strength of many
hundreds of horses; able to swim at a rate that would carry it right
round the world in twenty-three days; that can smash a boat to atoms
with one slap of its tail, and stave in the planks of a ship with one blow
of its thick skull;--that such a monster can be caught and killed by man,
is most wonderful to hear of, but I can tell from experience that it is
much more wonderful to see.
There is a wise saying which I have often thought much upon. It is this:
"Knowledge is power". Man is but a feeble creature, and if he had to
depend on his own bodily strength alone he could make no head against
even the ordinary brutes in this world. But the knowledge which has
been given to him by his Maker has clothed man with great power, so
that he is more than a match for the fiercest beast in the forest, or the
largest fish in the sea. Yet, with all his knowledge, with all his
experience, and all his power, the killing of a great old sperm whale
costs man a long, tough battle, sometimes it even costs him his life.
It is a long time now since I took to fighting the whales. I have been at
it, man and boy, for nigh forty years, and many a wonderful sight have
I seen; many a desperate battle have I fought in the fisheries of the
North and South Seas.
Sometimes, when I sit in the chimney-corner of a winter evening,
smoking my pipe with my old messmate Tom Lokins, I stare into the

fire and think of the days gone by till I forget where I am, and go on
thinking so hard that the flames seem to turn into melting fires, and the
bars of the grate into dead fish, and the smoke into sails and rigging,
and I go to work cutting up the blubber and stirring the oil-pots, or
pulling the bow-oar and driving the harpoon at such a rate that I can't
help giving a shout, which causes Tom to start and cry:
"Hallo! Bob" (my name is Bob Ledbury, you see). "Hallo! Bob, wot's
the matter?"
To which I reply, "Tom, can it all be true?"
"Can wot be true?" says he, with a stare of surprise--for Tom is getting
into his dotage now.
And then I chuckle and tell him I was only thinking of old times, and so
he falls to smoking again, and I to staring at the fire, and thinking as
hard as ever.
The way in which I was first led to go after the whales was curious.
This is how it happened.
About forty years ago, when I was a boy of nearly fifteen years of age,
I lived with my mother in one of the seaport towns of England. There
was great distress in the town at that time, and many of the hands were
out of work. My