Whaling Tale

The story is about a rock penguin

It's a small penguin not a king penguin

You can see thousands of them breeding

When the warm season starts

And they only lay one egg at a time

And if you take one away they lay another egg but no more

But i want to tell this story really about one incident one day

It was a gray misty day with the wind blowing hard

And there was a heavy swell running

And the whale factory was pitching and yawing

Not really a very good day to pick up the whales over the stern of the factory ship

There were one or two dead whales at the stern of the vessel

And the whale cathcers where coming in with their whales

And in the distance you could see the icebergs

Quite a number of them

And the men were trying to get ready to pull the whales over the stern of the vessel

There was a pack of killer whales around

Which came tearing towards the factory ship

And they tore chunks out of the whales

There were a number of men at the stern of the veesssel with guns shooting at the killer whales

The minute they hit a killer whale the rest of the pack went after him and tore him to pieces

But lets get back to the story of the penguin

I'd say there were about 6 or 7 whales some of them blue some of them fin

At the stern of the vessel

And there was that small rock penguin sitting on top of the whale back

And as we were pulling up the whales one after another over the stern of the vessel

It was rather difficult with the heavy swell running

The penguin hopped from one whale to another

The killer whales were all around the dead whales

They were tearing into them and the sea was red with blood

And by that time there was a number of men from the whale factory coming astern and watching the penguin at the back of the whale

And the men where shooting as fast as they could to stop the killer whale from getting getting the penguin

Which was sitting trying to hold on to the back of the whale

But as the whale was pulled up the chute

It was difficult for the winchman to regulate

And he had to watch very carefully not to

With the swell of the vessel

With the swell of the sea running and the vessel moving

To stop the penguin from slipping off its back

The chute was quite steep it was about i would say 30 degrees

And the little penguin climbed close to the tail of the whale

From which the whale was pulled up the chute

And the men were all standing around and watching and hoping that that penguin would finally get up get up on deck

It took a long time to heave that last whale up

If there was a swell the winchman up on top had to watch and be as careful as possible not to jerk and increase the movement

So that the little penguin could stay on top

We got him to the stern of the chute at the beginning of the chute

And we got the

We kept on

We kept on slowly pulling and as we pulled the little penguin

Slowly but surely went along the back of the whale from the tail of from the tail to the middle of to the middle of the back

But at that time the sea was running heavy and the movement at the stern was rather erratic

Finally when we got him up about 3/4 of the way

I dont think there was a man working on the stern of the factory

They were all watching and hoping too that the little penguin would get up on top

As the killer whales were just waiting down below and just watching

And the men were shooting and trying to kill these killer whales

They were afraid that the little penguin might slip in the water

Finally when we got it really all the way up

Everybody started to breathe a sigh of relief

But there was a heavy heavy swell which came under the factory

And rolled the whale on the side and the little penguin slipped off

And as it went down the chute the killer whales got it

Most of the men were not happy that day

There were also ... there's millions of penguins

That was one of the sights which i did not care to see again

But thats the way in antarctic

Theres no give and take

Its a hard hard place to be in

But

C'est la vie