Part 1 (2/2)
”I got pero in the boat!” the boy answered triumphantly, ”and I just can't wait”
”It's the skipper's business, I suppose, but I don't hold with takin'
any chances you don't have to,” was the gruff coao so much, Hank,” caet Father's permission to join the Bureau of Fisheries,”
explained the boy, ”and when Captain Murchison started on this trip, I begged him to let me come The captain is an old friend of his”
”I'd rather you went in soracious response
”Why, Hank!” exclai to say!”
The old sailor nodded sagely
”The skipper don't know much more about boat-whalin' than you do,” he said, ”that was all done away before his tiht, but a whalin' boat is just about the riskiest thing that floats on water”
”How's that, Hank?” asked the boy ”I always thought they were supposed to be so seaworthy”
”They riuarantee to make a boat that'd be orthy”
”But I'm sure I've read somewhere that whales never attacked boats,”
persisted Colin
”Mebbe,” rejoined the gunner, ”but I don't believe that any man rites about whalin' bein' easy, has ever tried it in a small boat”
”Well,” said the boy, ”isn't it true that the only time a whale-boat is smashed up is when the monster threshes around in the death-flurry and happens to hit the boat with his tail?”
”Not always”
”You o for a boat, in spite of what the books say?”
”I never heard that whales cared much about literatoor,” the sailor answered with an atteh humor, ”an' anyway, most o' them books you've been readin', lad, are written about whalin' off Greenland an' in the Atlantic”
”What difference does that make?” queried Colin ”Isn't a whale the same sort of animal all the world over?”
”There's all kinds of whales,” the gunner said, as though pitying the boy for his lack of knowledge, ”soood an'
soht' whale, f'r instance, couldn't harm a baby, but the killers are just pure vicious”
”You mean the orcas?” the boy queried ”Only just the other day Captain Murchison was talking about them He called the hunters aers, soreed, ”an' they're fiercer than any wolves I've ever heard about, but I never saw any of 'em attackin' a boat I have seen as ely at a whale that was lyin' alongside a shi+p an' was bein' cut up by the crew
The California gray whale--the devil-whale is what he really is--looks a lot worse to ly-tempered as a spearfish, as vicious as a man-eatin' shark, as tricky as a moray, an' about as relentless as a closin' ice-floe”
”There she blo-o-ows!” caain from the crow's-nest