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A WHALE OF A STORY Big Bull Tore Off to Sea Dragging Steamer Like a Toy for Twenty Hiles Those who cannot get a real treat by dropping flown to East Hampton L I and listening to Capt Samuel Edwards tell how he caught the two whales off the beach there Friday will have to be satisfied with this secondhand account accountAilmitting Ailmitting that no one else could tell it as well as the rahtain anyhow he lias the further advantage t having the bodies of the whales one a bull 100 feet long and one a cow sixty feet long hauled 1 comfortably on the sands at Promised Land near Montauk Point So when the cantain says the eow whale towed his fishing steamer with him and eleven fellow whale hunters tew miles to sea and that the bull towed them twenty miles he can jerk a weather beaten thumb in the general direction of his catch with some hope of l eiiig believed believedAnd And when he tells of the fight the bull whale put up at the end of the twentymile tow and the hearer is scanning 100 feet of whale the chances are that the hearer is willing to concede it may have been some little tussle after all allMaybe Maybe the bearer is just thinking that he is glad he never met up with a counle of whales when he was out wading Iwforc breakfast or trying to teach the baby nut to be afraid of the water when either the captain or some one else says it is esti ¬ mated tin two whales are wortli about 15000 TliPii perhaps he is sorry he has not met more whales whalesCaptain Captain Edwards met those two whales of his less than a quarter of a mile off shore They were floating on the water The captains father was Joshua Edwards a noted whaler of Amagansett He had enough of his father in him to know that one d Msnt fish for whales by ones lonesome or with the same tackle that one goes after menhaden with which was the sort of fin creature he was after then II put on full steam for home There he got ehveii men among them his three brothers Samuel Everitt and Bert and Felix Dominy not to mention a harpoon a lance gun and rope ropeReturning Returning he eased the little steamer up to the cow whale The harpoon was driven home And the fight was on onFor For ten miles the cow towed the steamer through the sea Tiien tired she stopped The steamer ap ¬ proached within ten feet and Boatswain Hanson fired the lance into a vital spot Half an hour later the cow was dead Some of the whale hunters were left in a skiff to iiinl the prize while others on the steamer went looking fc the buH They found the big fellow still basking in the sun where they had left him Dominy threw the harpoon into him with what developed the perfect aim aimThe The bull tore off to sea dragging the steamer like a tor in his wake After he had gone twenty miles at a terrific clip lie l egan to falter and soon stopjMd Xow the steamer crept close to his pon ¬ derous bulk and Captain Eric Edwards drove the lance home homeMaddened Maddened by the mortal wound the giant bull churned the water into foam He raced around and around the steamer blindly a furious but senseless battering ram of flesh and blood that might have crumpled the little bunker craft For two hours he floundered and fought in the death agonies and twice his tail hit the stem of the boat boatAfter After his death his Inxly was lashed to that of the cow and they were towed around Montauk Point to Promised Land The two great hulks now are on exhibition there thereThe The bull whale is said to be the largest whale ever captured at East Hampton This was the first time two whales were taken together off East Hampton Xew York AVorld
