four boats and then get away with it after all, for it is the
swiftest of all the cetacean family, and all whalemen say that no
one but a stark lunatic would dream of putting an iron into a loose
"finner," such as ranges the Southern Ocean. I was told, however, of
one well-authenticated case off the Azores, where a reckless Portuguese
shore-whaler struck a bull finback, which, after taking the lines from
four boats (220 fathoms in each) towed them for three hours and then got
away, the line having to be cut owing to the creature sounding to such
an enormous depth that no more line was available.

The shore whaling parties at Twofold Bay, however, run no risks of this
sort. They let their friends, the Gladiators, do most of the work, and
find that "fin-backing" under these circumstances is fairly profitable,
inasmuch as they can tow the carcase ashore, and "try out" the blubber
at their leisure.

But, in a case where one of these finbacks is held by killers, it can
be approached, as I have said, by shore boats and killed, as is the
practice of the Twofold Bay whalemen.

Let the writer now quote, with the publisher's permission, from a work
he wrote some years ago describing the way the killers "work in" with
their human friends. In this particular instance, however, it was a
humpback whale, but as _Orca Gladiator_ treats the humpback and "right"
whale as he does the lengthy "finner," the extract from the article is
quite applicable.

"Let us imagine a warm, sunny day in August at Twofold Bay. The man who
is on the look-out at the abandoned old lighthouse built by one Ben Boyd
on the southern headland fifty years ago, paces to and fro on the grassy
sward, stopping now and then to scan the wide expanse of ocean with
his glass, for the spout of a whale is hard to discern at more than
two miles if the weather is misty or rainy. But if the creature is in a
playful mood, and 'breaches'--that is, springs bodily out of the water,
and falling back, sends up a white volume of foam and spray, like the
discharge of a submarine mine, you can see it eight miles away.

"The two boats are always in readiness at the trying-out works, a mile
or so up the harbour; so too are the killers, and the look-out man,
walking to the verge of the cliff, gazes down.

"There they are, cruising slowly up and down, close in shore, spouting
lazily, and showing their wet, gleaming backs and gaff-topsail-like
dorsal fins as they rise, roll, and dive