them. Some of them kept just ahead of her stem,
where it cut through the water, and they leaped and gambolled, but the
ship never caught up with them. And they were doing the same thing all
about.

Seeing the porpoises that kept just ahead of the _Industry_ made the
sailors think of something and they all thought of the same thing at
once. Perhaps it was because it was about breakfast time. Four of the
men went aft to speak to the mate, who was standing where the deck is
higher. And the mate didn't wait for them to speak, for he knew just
what they were going to ask him. The men had their hats in their hands
by the time they got near.

The mate smiled. "Yes, you may," he said. "I'll get 'em." And he went
into the cabin.

When he had gone the men grinned at each other and looked pleased and
each man was thinking that the mate was not so bad, after all, even if
he did make them do work that didn't need to be done, just to kept them
busy. But they didn't say anything.

Then the mate came out, and he had two harpoons in his hand.

"There!" he said. "Two's enough. You'd only get in each other's way if
there were more. Bend a line on to each, and make it fast, somewhere."

Then Captain Solomon came on deck, and he offered a prize of half a
pound of tobacco to the best harpooner. And the men cheered when they
heard him, and they took the harpoons and ran forward.

They hurried and fastened a rather small rope on to each harpoon, in the
way a rope ought to be fastened to a harpoon, and two of the sailors
took the two harpoons and went down under the bowsprit, in among the
chains that go from the end of the bowsprit to the stem of the ship.
They went there so as to be near the water. They might get wet there,
but they didn't care about that. And the other end of the rope, that was
fastened to each harpoon, was made fast up on deck, so that the harpoon
shouldn't be lost if it wasn't stuck into a porpoise, and so that the
porpoise shouldn't get away if it was stuck into him.

One of the sailors was so excited that he didn't hit anything with his
harpoon, and the sailors up on deck hauled it in. The other sailor
managed to hit a porpoise, but he was excited, too, and the harpoon
didn't go in the right place. When the sailors up on deck tried to haul
the porpoise in, it broke away, and went swimming off.

Then those sailors came back on deck and two others took their places.
One of those others had been harpooner on a whal