The leviathan came in with the tide and went up to the vicinity of Rabbit Island.
A whaleboat, with a crew under the guidance of Mr Charles Bradshaw, was quickly manned, but in their eagerness to pursue they tired themselves out rowing after the monster.
Several motor launches went out and assisted the whaleboat to keep near the scene of operations.
As a result a few hairbreadth escapes are recorded, for on more than one occasion the occupants of these oil crafts were in imminent danger of being capsized.
The harpoonist managed to plunge his weapon once into the monster, but the latter wriggled out of it with no more harm to himself than the loss of a little blood.
The general opinion expressed by old whalers is that the engines of the small craft frightened the whale out of the harbour, for he came down with the tide about dusk and got out to the open sea.
• Pathe Freres, the celebrated firm of kinematograph film manufacturers of Paris, have submitted a scheme to the Hon.
Thomas Mackenzie, Minister of Health and Tourist Resorts, for advertising the industrial and scenic resources of the Dominion per medium of the kinematograph.
The firm concludes its message with the following appeal: - "Now that it is necessary for the colonies to live in closer spiritual touch with the Mother Country, it is to everybody's interest to know something of other countries by the best means possible, and each State owes it to its own welfare to see that it is not left behind in the storm of publicity which is about to burst around the colonies, which have hitherto been, we might also say, unknown among the great nations of the world, and this through the medium of the greatest advertiser ever known - the kinematograph."
• A Bluff firm of fish merchants is experimenting with a plant for canning oysters, which are preserved in their own liquor.
The experiments are, it is reported, being carried out with considerable prospect of success. - ODT, 27.8.1909.
