'We've a contract
with a Scotch firm for every barrel of oil we can deliver for years
ahead. It's reckoned the best for harness-dressing.'
He went on to tell me how a swift ship goes hunting whales with a
bomb-gun and explodes shells into their insides so that they perish at
once.
'All the old harpoon and boat business would take till the cows come
home. We kill 'em right off.'
'And how d'you strip 'em?'
It seemed that the expeditious ship carried also a large air-pump, and
pumped up the carcass to float roundly till she could attend to it. At
the end of her day's kill she would return, towing sometimes as many as
four inflated whales to the whalery, which is a factory full of modern
appliances. The whales are hauled up inclined planes like logs to a
sawmill, and as much of them as will not make oil for the Scotch
leather-dresser, or cannot be dried for the Japanese market, is
converted into potent manure.
'No manure can touch ours,' said the shareholder. 'It's so rich in bone,
d'you see. The only thing that has beat us up to date is their hides;
but we've fixed up a patent process now for turning 'em into floorcloth.
Yes, they're beautiful beasts.
