The sailor who had been standing near the barrel nodded, as he drew his sheath-knife from its sheath, holding it between his teeth, ready to cut the line should a tangle occur, but keeping his hands free to attend to the coils of rope. To Colin the seconds were as years while the old whaler held the gun raised and did not fire. It seemed to the boy as if he were never going to pull the trigger, but the old gunner knew the exact moment, and just as the whale was about to 'sound' the back heaved up slightly, revealing the absence of a dorsal fin, and thus determining that it was a devil-whale in truth; at that instant Hank fired.

With the sudden pang of the harpoon the whale gave an upward leap for a dive and plunged, throwing the flukes of the tail and almost a third of his body out of water, and sounded to the bottom, taking down line at a tremendous speed. The line ran clear, Scotty watching every coil, and though the heavy rope was soaking wet, it began to smoke with the friction as it ran over the bow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHALE HARPOON GUN LOADED AND BEING TURNED SO AS TO POINT AT THE WHALE.

_Photograph by permission of Mr. Roy C. Andrews._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FINBACK WHALE BEING STRUCK WITH THE HARPOON; THE INSTANT OF DISCHARGE.

A remarkable photograph, scores of plates having been used in the effort to catch the exact moment. Note the wadding in the air, the smoke, the head of the harpoon, and the slick on the water as the whale sounded.

_Photograph by permission of Mr. Roy C. Andrews._]

"Fifty fathom!" cried Scotty, as the line flew out.

"Sixty!" he called a moment later, and then, immediately after,

"Seventy--and holding!"

As the pressure of the brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again.

He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, coming up suddenly quite near the boat. Scotty had lost no time, and not more than thirty-five fathom of line was out when the monster rose.

"He's a big un, Hank!" called Scotty. "Want the other line?"

"Got it!" was the brief reply, and Colin saw that the harpoon-gun had been reloaded.

"Sounding again!" called Scotty as the rope fell slack.

"No!" yelled Hank. "Stand by, all!"

Then suddenly:

"Back oars! Back, you lubbers! Hard as you know how!"

The oars bent like yew-staves.

"Back starboard! Hard!"

With the blood rushing to his brain, Colin, who was on the starboard side of the boat, threw his whole energy into the back stroke, and the boat spun round like a top into what seemed to be the seething center of a submarine volcano, for, with a roar that made the timbers of the boat vibrate, the gray whale spouted not six feet from where the boy was sitting. Dimly he saw the harpoon hurtle through the spray and the sharp crack of the explosion sounded in his ear.

Catching his breath chokingly, Colin was only conscious of the fact that he was expected to pull and he leapt into the stroke as the six oars shot the boat ahead.

Not soon enough, though! For, as the boat plunged from the crest of a wave the whale swirled, making a suction like a whirlpool into which the craft lurched drunkenly. Then the great creature, turning with a speed that seemed incredible, brought down the flukes of his tail in the direction of the boat, snapping off the stroke oar like a pipe-stem.

Avidsen, the oarsman, a burly Norwegian, though his wrist was sharply and painfully wrenched by the blow, made no complaint, but reached out for one of the spare oars the boat always carried.

Colin was not so calm. Despite his courage, the shock of that tremendous tail striking the water within arm's-length of the boat had shaken his nerve, and the sudden drenching with the icy waters of Behring Sea had taken his breath away. But he was game and stuck to his oar. Looking at Hank, he saw that the old fighter of the seas had dropped the harpoon-gun and was holding poised the long lance.

This was hunting whales with a vengeance!

The monster had not sounded but was only gathering fury, and in a few seconds he came to the surface with a rush, charging straight for the boat.

"Stand by to pull," said Hank quietly.

The two forward oars, watching, dipped lightly and moved the boat a yard or two, then waited, their oars in the water and arms extended for the stroke. Colin would have given millions, if he had possessed them, to pull his oar, to do something to get away from the leviathan charging like an avenging fury for the little boat. But Hank stood motionless.

Another second and Colin could almost feel the devil-whale plunging through the frail craft, when Scotty suddenly yelled,

"Pull!"

As Scotty yelled, Colin vaguely--for everything seemed reeling about him--saw Hank lunge with the long steel lance. The suction half whirled the boat round, but the whale sounded a little, coming up to the surface forty feet away and spouting hollowly. Even to the boy's untrained ear there was a difference, and when he noticed that blood was mixed with the vapor thrown out from the blowhole, his hope revived. The second rush of the whale was easily avoided, and Hank thrust in the lance again. Then, for the first time, the old whaler permitted himself to smile, a long, slow smile.

"That's the way it used to be done in the old days!" he said, with just a shade of triumph in his voice. "Pull away a little, boys, to be clear of the flurry. Have you a buoy ready, Scotty?"

The sailor nodded.

"There won't be much of a flurry, Hank," he said; "you got the lungs with the lance both times."

The old whaler looked at Colin, who was a little white about the lips.

"Scared you, I reckon?" he said. "You don't need to feel bad over that.

Any one's got a right to be scared when a whale's chargin' the boat.

I've been whalin' for nigh on forty-five years an' that's only the second devil-whale I've ever killed with a hand-lance. He pretty near caught us with his flukes that first time, too!"

"Guess that's the end of him," said Scotty, as the big animal beat the air with his tail, the slap of the huge flukes throwing up a fountain of spray.

"That's the end," agreed Hank.

Almost with the word the great gray whale turned, one fin looming above the water as he did so, and sank heavily to the bottom, the buoy which had been attached to the harpoon-line by Scotty showing where he sank, so that the ship could pick up the carca.s.s later.

"How big do you suppose that whale was?" queried the boy as they started to pull back to the ship.

"'Bout forty-five foot, I reckon," was the reply, "an' we ought to get about twenty barrels of oil out of him."

"That ought to help some," said Colin, "and you see my coming didn't hurt anything. Just think if I had missed all that fun!"

"It turned out all right," the old whaler said, "but I tell you it was a narrow squeak. They'll have been worryin' on board, though, if any one has been able to see that we were hitched up to a gray whale."

"Isn't there any danger with other whales?"

"Wa'al, you've got to know how to get at 'em, of course. But all you've got to do is to keep out o' the way. There's no whale except the California whale that'll charge a boat. I did know one chap that was killed by a humpback, but that was because the whale come up suddenly right under the boat and upset it--they often do that--an' when one of the chaps was in the water the whale happened to give a slap with his tail an' the poor fellow was right under it."

Colin was anxious to start the old whaler on some yarns of the early days, but as the boat was nearing the ship he decided to wait for an opportunity when there would be more time and the raconteur would have full leeway for his stories.

"Forty-five-footer, sir," called Hank, as they came up to the ship.

"Gray devil, sir."

The captain lifted his eyebrows in surprise, for he had not thought of a California whale so far north, but he answered in an offhand way:

"More sport than profit in that. Did you have a run for your money, Colin?"