Joust: The Facts, Man

For the first time I’d seen, Thesaurus was flustered. “This whale ain’t like no other on the Earth,” he said. I suspected he was thinking Bulbus was pulling the strings from on high.

The second boat pulled up alongside us. Flarq too was puzzled. “Whale-Killing 101 ain’t gonna cut it, Captain,” he said. “It don’t cover whales that do the things this one do.”

“Well then let’s have a crash course in 102,” I said, turning the wheel so that we were positioned for another go at Dickhead.

That was unnecessary though. The bastard had slammed on his whale brakes and was turning round for another run at us. I looked to Thesaurus for advice.

“Pray,” he said.

Gus is calling for a radical re-shaping of the Rule of Engagement (Whales, For The Killing Of). He and the others are going at it a bit old-school (traditionalists, all of them. Rather charming and very manly). He has taken care to describe how the harpoons are set up with a mile of hempen line and wrapped around the boat, so that it can be used as a drag but the line can be released easily if the beast dives.

However, the whale is quite the aggressor in this little conflict. It's time for Gus to turn into the fire and charge him, with harpoons lashed to the bow of one of his boats. In order to keep the more fundamentalist of his crew happy, they could perhaps beat time on the side of the boat while Gus hits the throttle and hollers "Ramming speed!"

And then perhaps they should all be ready to leap into the other boat and speed away after ramming the whale with 4 or 5 wickedly sharp harpoons, since the whale will certainly smash the first boat to splinters.

Perhaps the second boat could launch harpoons (ie., deploy conventional whale-killing weapons) before picking them up. Or...

Don't mind me, I'm just an armchair whale-killing jousting match quarterbackess.

Meanwhile, it appears we'd best be ready to host a bash of some sort. But whether it will be a celebration or a consolatory wake remains to be seen.