ng with the ship.

[Illustration: "THERE SHE BLOWS"]

In approaching the whale, every effort is made to come up to him at the
point of least danger. This point is determined partly by the lines of the
whale's vision, partly by his methods of defense. The right whale can only
see dead ahead, and his one weapon is his tail, which gigantic fin,
weighing several tons and measuring sometimes twenty feet across the tips
of the flukes, he swings with irresistible force and all the agility of a
fencer at sword-play. He, therefore, is attacked from the side, well
toward his jaws. The sperm whale, however, is dangerous at both ends. His
tail, though less elastic than that of the right whale, can deal a
prodigious up-and-down blow, while his gigantic jaws, well garnished with
sharp teeth, and capacious gullet, that readily could gulp down a man, are
his chief terrors. His eyes, too, set obliquely, enable him to command the
sea at all points save dead ahead, and it is accordingly from this point
that the fishermen approach him. But however stealthily they move, the
opportunities for disappointment are many. Big as he is, the whale is not
sluggish. In an instant he may sink bodily from sight; or, throwing his
flukes high in air, "sound," to be seen no more; or, casting himself
bodily on the boat, blot it out of existence; or, taking it in his jaws,
carry it down with him. But supposing the whale to be oblivious of its
approach, the boat comes as near as seems safe, and the harpooner, poised
in the bow, his knee against the bracket that steadies him, lets fly his
weapon; and, hit or miss, follows it up at once with a second bent onto
the same line. Some harpooners were of such strength and skill that they
could hurl their irons as far as four or five fathoms. In one famous case
boats from an American and British ship were in pursuit of the same whale,
the British boat on the inside. It is the law of the fishery that the
whale belongs to the boat that first makes fast--and many a pretty
quarrel has grown out of this rule. So in this instance--seeing the danger
that his rival might win the game--the American harpooner, with a
prodigious effort, darted his iron clear over the rival boat and deep into
the mass of blubber.

[Illustration: "TAKING IT IN HIS JAWS"]

What a whale will do when struck no man can tell before the event. The
boat-load of puffing, perspiring men who have pulled at full speed up to
the monster may suddenly find