{"id":134,"date":"2014-08-06T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/macyplace.com\/tom\/blog\/?p=134"},"modified":"2014-08-06T17:30:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T17:30:00","slug":"to-hunt-a-whale-part-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/2014\/08\/06\/to-hunt-a-whale-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"To Hunt a Whale &#8211; Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Lean forward\u2026dip the oars into the water\u2026pull; lean\u2026dip\u2026pull. Over and over. Again and again. And the ship gets no closer. Towing twenty tons of dead weight slows the whaleboat down. Lean\u2026dip\u2026pull. By the time the sun is directly overhead, the blood from the whale\u2019s final fury has dried on your clothes and skin. The sweat rolling down your face turns it into a sticky mess. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Closing your eyes, you lean\u2026dip\u2026pull, hearing the <\/span><i><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;\">shush<\/span><\/i><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> of the oars and timing your strokes to coincide. Groans get louder. You listen. They\u2019re coming from your mouth now. Lean\u2026dip\u2026pull. The pain from the cracks in your dry lips are barely noticeable. Lean\u2026dip\u2026pull.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The sun is halfway down to the western horizon. Your arms are numb; the muscles in your back seek rest when you lean, only to rebel when you begin to pull\u2026again. Lean\u2026dip\u2026pull.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">At last\u2026the ship\u2026you see your friends. Lean\u2026dip\u2026pull. You can almost touch it. Lean\u2026dip\u2026pull. The Mate yells something, but the words are lost in a fog or weariness. Somehow the whaleboat ends up beside the ship. There, arms are reaching down. You lift dead weights up; no, they\u2019re your arms. Someone grabs them and you\u2019re being hoisted out of the boat. You collapse to the deck.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Your body might be as dead as that whale. But the Captain doesn\u2019t care. At the moment, you hate him. He\u2019s demanding that you get back on your feet. It\u2019s time to cut it in.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lean forward\u2026dip the oars into the water\u2026pull; lean\u2026dip\u2026pull. Over and over. Again and again. And the ship gets no closer. Towing twenty tons of dead weight slows the whaleboat down. Lean\u2026dip\u2026pull. By the time the sun is directly overhead, the blood from the whale\u2019s final fury has dried on your clothes and skin. The sweat &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/2014\/08\/06\/to-hunt-a-whale-part-5\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;To Hunt a Whale &#8211; Part 5&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26,65,88,93,111],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-firstfury","tag-ann","tag-johnson","tag-rebecca","tag-sailing","tag-whaling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tom.macyplace.com\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}