The city children never wearied of Captain Hawes's stories of his voyages, and the Captain, with such good listeners, never wearied telling of them,—a perfect combination.

He told of how when a young man he used to go whaling. "Of course you know what whales are, big sea animals, you couldn't call them fish, often sixty or seventy feet long, 'as long as a big house,' huge creatures who lived in the northern or southern seas, though once in a while a stray one had been known to come into the Sound, not far from here."

Now the children were really excited. "Oh, if only one should happen to come this summer!" The Captain said that would be just a chance; it was hardly a thing you could count on.

When the ship reached the far-away seas where whales were to be found, "lookouts" were stationed aloft at the masthead to watch for them. When one was sighted the lookout shouted, "There she blows"; for the whales have a habit of blowing up spray when they come to the surface to breathe, then the boats were lowered and away the sailors went after the whale. When they came up with him they rowed as close as they dared, and the harpooner in the bow of the boat hurled his harpoon into the big creature's side.

The whale at once made a great commotion, slashing about and beating up the water, then diving deep down. The sailors "paid out" the rope attached to the harpoon as the whale went down. Sometimes they had to cut it to keep from being dragged under. But when this didn't happen the whale would come up after a while and start away dragging the boat along at a terrific speed. In time he would get tired and the boat would again be rowed near, and a lance thrust into his side until he was quite dead.

It was all exciting and dangerous work, for sometimes the whale would attack the boat and splinter it to pieces with a blow of his tail, and the men, often badly hurt, be thrown into the sea, and sometimes lost. The dead whale was towed off to the ship, here he was moored to the side, and the body cut up. The great pieces of fat blubber "tried out," that is, melted in pots over the fire on the deck, and the oil run off into barrels and stowed away in the hold.