The harpoon lines are made of the finest Italian hemp and tested for a breaking point of eighteen tons, but the forerunner is tested for only fifteen or sixteen tons. Some, made especially for use in hunting the giant blue whale, will resist a strain of twenty-eight tons. If a tight line is kept and there are no sudden jerks the ropes seldom break. Not far beyond the winch the mast is stepped, bearing near its peak a small barrel, called the “crow’s nest,” from which the whales are sighted. The vessels carry a crew of ten or twelve men beside the captain, who is usually also the gunner. In Japan vessels are required by the coasting laws to have a Japanese in command, and consequently a native captain is employed who takes the ship in and out of the harbor. He is really the pilot, and the vessel is turned over to the Norwegian gunner as soon as the open sea is reached. [Illustration: The harpoon is tipped with a hollow point called the “bomb,” which is filled with powder and ignited by a time fuse. The barbs, or flukes, are tied to the shaft of the iron. ] [Illustration: The harpoon after it has been fired into the body of a whale. The bomb has exploded and the shaft is bent. ] Although in various parts of the world I have met two or three gunners who were not Norwegians, there are not many such. From their Viking ancestors the Scandinavians have inherited their love for the sea and, since Svend Foyn’s time, Tønsberg has sent forth her sons to the whaleships much as did New Bedford half a century ago. Thus the present generation has grown up as the industry developed, and from boys to men they have seen it in all its phases and learned not only how to shoot a whale but how to handle it afterward, which is fully as important. [Illustration: A trial shot with the harpoon-gun. The harpoon line is shown, and three men may be seen in the barrel at the mast head. ] Even as the harpoon-gun brought with it a new era of whaling, so it gave to the scientist undreamed-of opportunities for the study of cetaceans. Until shore stations were established, few indeed were the naturalists who had examined more than five or six whales during their entire lives. These carcasses were usually of whales which had met with some accident at sea and had been cast up on the beach; almost always the animals had been dead for days before they came under the notice of a competent scientific observer, and had lost much of their original proportions and color. A whale’s body begins to generate gases at an astounding rate as soon as the animal is dead, and within a very few hours becomes so swelled and distorted that the true proportions are almost lost. Even trained naturalists did not always take this fact into consideration, and their descriptions and figures were consequently notable chiefly for their inaccuracy.