The gun had hardly been loaded before we were close to the whale, with the engines at dead slow, waiting for him to come up. I had taken out one of the lenses of my camera but decided that the light was not yet strong enough for the use of the single combination since the shutter would have to be operated at a high speed. Sitting down upon a tool box near the rail, I began hurriedly to replace the back lens and was just screwing it into position when “who-o-o” came the spout, not five fathoms from the stern of the ship. We all jumped as though a bomb had been exploded beside us and I nearly dropped the camera in my excitement. Somehow I managed to get the lens readjusted without accident, and stood ready with my arm around a rope just behind the gun platform. Before the ship swung about the whale had spouted two or three times and gone down. We hardly breathed while waiting and my nerves were so on edge that I almost released the shutter of the camera when the silence was broken by the voice of the Bo’s’n from the “top” singing out, “He’s coming, he’s coming!” “I can’t see him!” shouted the Gunner. “There, there, on the port bow!” came the answer from aloft. With a rush the great animal burst to the surface, and I caught a glimpse of the spout in the mirror of my camera as it shot up in a white cloud, glittering in the sunlight. “Will he shoot?” I thought. “No, no, it is too far,” and I pressed the button of the camera as the broad back came into view. Almost with the sound of the shutter, and before I had lifted my eyes from the focusing hood, I was deafened by the roar of the gun and enveloped in a great cloud of white smoke. It was impossible to see, but the line could be heard singing over the roller at the bow and, as the smoke blew away, I caught sight of the high back-fin of the whale cutting the water like a knife. [Illustration: “I pressed the button of the camera as the broad back came into view.” ] “Bur-r-r, whip!” went the heavy rope and in a few seconds a hundred fathoms had gone out. Never had I seen a whale run as that one did. The Engineer at the winch was just visible through the haze of smoke which streamed from the brake, and the smell of powder and burning wood hung thick in the air. [Illustration: The sei whale. From a drawing by J. Henry Blake under the direction of the author. ] Suddenly with a swish, up from the hold, fast to the rope, came a wad of brown fishing net that had become entangled in the coil below. I jumped to one side just in time to miss it as it swept by and to see it pass safely over the roller at the bow. It was a narrow escape, for if it had jammed, the line would surely have snapped and the whale been lost. [Illustration: “The winch was then started and the whale drawn slowly toward the ship.” ]