the bowsprit end, being held there by one man in readiness. Then
one of the harpooners ran out along the backropes, which keep the
jib-boom down, taking his stand beneath the bowsprit with the
harpoon ready. Presently he raised his iron and followed the
track of a rising porpoise with its point until the creature
broke water. At the same instant the weapon left his grasp,
apparently without any force behind it; but we on deck, holding
the line, soon found that our excited hauling lifted a big
vibrating body clean out of the smother beneath. "'Vast
hauling!" shouted the mate, while as the porpoise hung dangling,
the harpooner slipped the ready bowline over his body, gently
closing its grip round the "small" by the broad tail. Then we
hauled on the noose-line, slacking away the harpoon, and in a
minute had our prize on deck. He was dragged away at once and
the operation repeated. Again and again we hauled them in, until
the fore part of the deck was alive with the kicking, writhing
sea-pigs, at least twenty of them. I had seen an occasional
porpoise caught at sea before, but never more than one at a time.
Here, however, was a wholesale catch. At last one of the
harpooned ones plunged so furiously while being hauled up that he
literally tore himself off the iron, falling, streaming with
blood, back into the sea.

Away went all the school after him, tearing at him with their
long well-toothed jaws, some of them leaping high in the air in
their eagerness to get their due share of the cannibal feast.
Our fishing was over for that time. Meanwhile one of the
harpooners had brought out a number of knives, with which all
hands were soon busy skinning the blubber from the bodies.
Porpoises have no skin, that is hide, the blubber or coating of