they can find, and from which they can get the most extensive view. Here
they station a man on the look-out. They are aided in catching sight of a
whale both by his size and the water he spouts through his blow-holes,
which is more than a puncheon at a time, and two lances high. From the
amount of this water, they estimate how much oil he will yield. From some
they get as many as one hundred and twenty puncheons, from others less.
Having caught sight of this monstrous fish, they hasten to embark in their
shallops, and by rowing or sailing they advance until they are upon him.

Seeing him under water, the harpooner goes at once to the prow of the
shallop with his harpoon, an iron two feet long and half a foot wide at the
lower part, and attached to a stick as long as a small pike, in the middle
of which is a hole to which the hawser is made fast. The harpooner,
watching his time, throws his harpoon at the whale, which enters him well
forward. As soon as he finds himself wounded, the whale goes down. And if
by chance turning about, as he does sometimes, his tail strikes the
shallop, it breaks it like glass. This is the only risk they run of being
killed in harpooning. As soon as they have thrown the harpoon into him,
they let the hawser run until the whale reaches the bottom. But sometimes
he does not go straight to the bottom, when he drags the shallop eight or
nine leagues or more, going as swiftly as a horse. Very often they are
obliged to cut their hawser, for fear that the whale will take them
underwater. But, when he goes straight to the bottom, he rests there
awhile, and then returns quietly to the surface, the men taking aboard
again the hawser as he rises. When he comes to the top, two or three
shallops are stationed around with halberds, with which they give him
several blows. Finding himself struck, the whale goes down again, leaving a
trail of blood, and grows weak to such an extent that he has no longer any
strength nor energy, and returning to the surface is finally killed. When
dead, he does not go down again; fastening stout ropes to him, they drag