Fighting the Whales | Page 9

duty is attended with great danger. If any
hitch should take place, the line is apt to catch the boat and drag it
down bodily under the waves. Sometimes a coil of it gets round a leg or
an arm of the man who attends to it, in which case his destruction is
almost certain. Many a poor fellow has lost his life in this way.

The order was now given to "hold on line". This was done, and in a
moment our boat was cleaving the blue water like an arrow, while the
white foam curled from her bows. I thought every moment we should
be dragged under; but whenever this seemed likely to happen, the line
was let run a bit, and the strain eased. At last the fish grew tired of
dragging us, the line ceased to run out, and Tom hauled in the slack,
which another man coiled away in its tub. Presently the fish rose to the
surface, a short distance off our weather bow.
"Give way, boys! spring your oars," cried the captain; "another touch or
two with the lance, and that fish is ours."
The boat shot ahead, and we were about to dart a second harpoon into
the whale's side, when it took to "sounding",--which means, that it went
straight down, head foremost, into the depths of the sea. At that
moment Tom Lokins uttered a cry of mingled anger and
disappointment. We all turned round and saw our shipmate standing
with the slack line in his hand, and such an expression on his
weather-beaten face, that I could scarce help laughing. The harpoon
had not been well fixed; it had lost its hold, and the fish was now free!
"Gone!" exclaimed the captain with a groan.
I remember even yet the feeling of awful disappointment that came
over me when I understood that we had lost the fish after all our trouble!
I could almost have wept with bitter vexation. As for my comrades,
they sat staring at each other for some moments quite speechless.
Before we could recover from the state into which this misfortune had
thrown us, one of the men suddenly shouted, "Hallo! there's the mate's
boat in distress."
We turned at once, and, truly, there was no doubt of the truth of this,
for, about half a mile off, we beheld our first mate's boat tearing over
the sea like a small steamer. It was fast to a fish, and two oars were set
up on end to attract our attention.
When a whale is struck, it sometimes happens that the whole of the line
in a boat is run out. When this is about to occur, it becomes necessary

to hold on as much as can be done without running the boat under the
water, and an oar is set up on end to show that assistance is required,
either from the ship or from the other boats. As the line grows less and
less, another and another oar is hoisted to show that help must be sent
quickly. If no assistance can be sent, the only thing that remains to be
done is to cut the line and lose the fish; but a whale-line, with its
harpoon, is a very heavy loss, in addition to that of the fish, so that
whalers are tempted to hold on a little too long sometimes.
When we saw the mate's boat dashing away in this style, we forgot our
grief at the loss of our whale in anxiety to render assistance to our
comrades, and we rowed towards them as fast as we could. Fortunately
the whale changed its course and came straight towards us, so that we
ceased pulling, and waited till they came up. As the boat came on I saw
the foam curling up on her bows as she leaped and flew over the sea. I
could scarcely believe it possible that wood and iron could bear such a
strain. In a few minutes they were almost abreast of us.
"You're holding too hard!" shouted the captain.
"Lines all out!" roared the mate.
They were past almost before these short sentences could be spoken.
But they had not gone twenty yards ahead of us when the water rushed
in over the bow, and before we could utter a word the boat and crew
were gone. Not a trace of them remained! The horror of the moment
had not been fully felt, however, when the boat rose to the surface keel
up, and, one after another, the heads of the men appeared. The line had
fortunately broken, otherwise the boat would have been lost, and the
entire crew probably would have gone to the bottom with her.
We instantly pulled to the rescue, and were thankful to find