themselves confronted with a furious,
vindictive, aggressive beast weighing eighty tons, and bent on grinding
their boat and themselves to powder; or he may simply turn tail and run.
Sometimes he sounds, going down, down, down, until all the line in the
boat is exhausted, and all that other boats can bend on is gone too. Then
the end is thrown over with a drag, and his reappearance awaited.
Sometimes he dashes off over the surface of the water at a speed of
fifteen knots an hour, towing the boat, while the crew hope that their
"Nantucket sleigh-ride" will end before they lose the ship for good. But
once fast, the whalemen try to pull close alongside the monster. Then the
mate takes the long, keen lance and plunges it deep into the great
shuddering carcass, "churning" it up and down and seeking to pierce the
heart or lungs. This is the moment of danger; for, driven mad with pain,
the great beast rolls and thrashes about convulsively. If the boat clings
fast to his side, it is in danger of being crushed or engulfed at any
moment; if it retreats, he may recover himself and be off before the
death-stroke can be delivered. In later days the explosive bomb,
discharged from a distance, has done away with this peril; but in the
palmy days of the whale fishery the men would rush into the circle of sea
lashed into foam by those mighty fins, get close to the whale, as the
boxer gets under the guard of his foe, smite him with lance and
razor-edged spade until his spouts ran red, and to his fury there should
succeed the calm of approaching death. Then the boats, pulled off. The
command was "Pipes all"; and, placidly smoking in the presence of that
mighty death, the whalers awaited their ship.

Stories of "fighting whales" fill the chronicles of our old whaling ports.
There was the old bull sperm encountered by Captain Huntling off the River
De La Plata, which is told us in a fascinating old book, "The Nimrod of
the Sea." The first boat that made fast to this tough old warrior he
speedily bit in two; and while her crew were swimming away from the wreck
with all possible speed, the whale thrashed away at the pieces until all
were reduced to small bits. Two other boats meanwhile made fast to the
furious animal. Wheeling about in the foam, reddened with his blood, he
crushed them as a tiger would crunch its prey. All about him were men
struggling in the water--twelve of them, the crews of the two demolished
boats. Of the boats themselves