Page 172 - KBHA Bulletin 10

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The whaling teams had their own lookouts who would use smoke signals to indicate the
direction in which the whale was heading. At the first sighting the race was on and the

team who arrived at the whale first was left to finish the kill. The Auret team were first
at the prize that day, and in no time they readied for the harpooner to throw the harpoon

into the massive bulk of the biggest whale they had ever seen. The mighty beast lost no

time in accelerating its pace to get away from this irritating attachment. With their
cunning expertise the crew paid out the rope attached to the harpoon firmly embedded

in the now speeding monster. From time to time they got a glimpse of its enormous size.
From its head ran a 50 cm white band right down to the stem of its feared tail. At every

sounding they carefully tallied the coloured fathom-markers, the telltale distance pieces
between them and the whale. After every sounding their best efforts to position the boat

for the lancer to throw the death-dealing lance aimed at the heart of their prey, were

shattered. Sounding after sounding came and went without the faintest chance of even
attempting a throw.

The backup team had returned to shore as they could by no means keep up with the pace
of this whale. Devoted, desperate but persistent in their hope that this creature would

eventually tire, as had the others they had so successfully harvested before, they held
on. But as the day wore on at the perimeter of the bay, doubt began to grow as there was

no let up in the pace of this most unusual monster. Then the skipper finally gave the
order to chop the taut rope, using the flame-sharp axe kept in a tidy bucket. Turning the

boat around to start the long and tedious journey home they realised that an offshore

wind had sprung up and that the road home was going to be wearisome.

Already exhausted after their hours-long chase, they rowed with all their skill, taking
turns to snatch some relief from straining at the oars against a wind that had by this time

reached gale force. They plodded on but they feared that they were losing the race. This
fear soon filtered through the whole crew, realizing that they were not making any

headway against this storm and that there was no possibility of help arriving. At the

point of absolute desperation, Abraham, standing at the steering oar, started to sing,
raising his stentorian bass voice above the howling wind. As the words of “Lead kindly