, and away he went, with Socrates in the bows, to fasten to a
huge creature that was rolling on the water in a species of sluggish
enjoyment of its instincts. It often happens that very young soldiers,
more especially when an _esprit de corps_ has been awakened in them,
achieve things from which older troops would retire, under the
consciousness of their hazards. So did it prove with the Martha's boat's
crew on this occasion. Betts steered, and he put them directly on the
whale; Socrates, who looked fairly green under the influence of alarm
and eagerness to attack, both increased by the total novelty of his
situation, making his dart of the harpoon when the bows of the fragile
craft were literally over the huge body of the animal. All the energy of
the negro was thrown into his blow, for he felt as if it were life or
death with him; and the whale spouted blood immediately. It is deemed a
great exploit with whalers, though it is not of very rare occurrence, to
inflict a death-wound with the harpoon; that implement being intended to
make fast with to the fish, which is subsequently slain with what is
termed a lance. But Socrates actually killed the first whale he ever
struck, with the harpoon; and from that moment he became an important
personage in the fisheries of those seas. That blow was a sort of Palo
Alto affair to him, and was the forerunner of many similar successes.
Indeed, it soon got to be said, that "with Bob Betts to put the boat on,
and old Soc to strike, a whale commonly has a hard time on't." It is
true, that a good many boats were stove, and two Kannakas were drowned,
that very summer, in consequence of these tactics; but the whales were
killed, and Betts and the black escaped with whole skins.

On this, the first occasion, the whale made the water foam, half-filled
the boat, and would have dragged it under, but for the vigour of the
negro's arm, and the home character of the blow, which caused the fish
to turn up and breathe his last, before he had time to run any great
distance. The governor arrived on the spot, just as Bob had got a hawser
to the whale and was ready to fill away for the South Cape channel
again. The vessels passed each other cheering, and the governor
admonished his friend not to carry the carcass too near the dwellings,
lest it should render them uninhabitable. But Betts had his anchorage
already in his eye, and away he went, with the wind on his quarter,
towing his prize at the rate o