When I had descended to the deck and stood beside Captain Grahame on the bridge his face was beaming with smiles. Pulling out his watch, he said: “It’s only ten o’clock and I think we will tow these three in. The rest of the bunch are scattered now, but maybe they will come together this afternoon, and we can get back in time for the evening hunting.” In half an hour all the whales had been made fast to the bow and the engines were throbbing monotonously as the sturdy little vessel plowed her way through the water toward the station, leaving a long black trail across the blue sky behind. CHAPTER XIV SHIPS ATTACKED BY WHALES After I left Alaska the Tyee Company put into service a wooden whale ship called the _Sorenson_, which in 1910 was sunk by a finback. The animal had been struck by one iron and, suddenly going into its death flurry, began charging madly in every direction. [Illustration: The long slender body of a finback lying on its side; the outer edges of the whalebone plates in the mouth are well shown. ] In one of its wild dashes the sixty-ton whale, coming at a speed of probably twenty-five knots per hour, drove straight into the ship, crushing her side like an eggshell and tearing her almost apart. The vessel filled so rapidly that the crew were hardly able to get a small boat over before she went down. Later the men were all rescued. J. G. Millais, Esq., says of the finback: Space will not allow me to give any of the numerous stories of the exciting hunts to which one listens in the galley and the cabin of the Atlantic Finwhalers, but they prove that the chase of this great Whale calls for the sternest courage and readiest resource. To stand up in a tiny “pram” amidst a whirl of waters and lance a fighting Finback is no child’s play, and requires that six o’clock in the morning pluck that the Norsemen possess in a high degree. Many accidents have occurred to the boat crews when engaged in “lancing,” and one or two to the steamers themselves. The whaler _Gracia_, belonging to Vadso, was sunk by a Finner in 1894 in the Varanger Fjord. In 1896 the _Jarfjord_ was sunk in ten minutes by one of these Whales charging it, when about sixty miles north of the North Cape. A heavy sea was running at the time, and the crew crowded into two small prams, which would probably have been overwhelmed had not Captain Castberg, hunting in another steamer, come to their rescue.[7] Footnote 7: “The Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland.” By J. G. Millais. Longmans, Green, & Co., p. 271. Without doubt practically all ships which have been injured or sunk by whales have been struck by accident. Just before a whale dies it goes into what is called the death flurry and dashes wildly about in every direction. If a ship or boat happens to be near it stands an excellent chance of being rammed, for the animal is utterly blind in its rushes.