ed to deprive me of
the ordinary powers of thought or imagination. My only conscious idea
was that I was a dead boy if I could not cut that line!

I was rushing down into the depths head-foremost--and with the
swiftness, it seemed, of a reversed skyrocket! I thought my arm would be
torn from its socket, so great was the resistance of the water.
Fortunately I had been clothed in a thick jacket, and that jacket-sleeve
saved my arm from being mutilated.

I was traveling so fast behind the sounding whale that I could not move
my right arm from my side. It seemed glued there, so closely was it
pressed to my body by the force of the water. The pressure on my brain
became frightful, too, and thunder roared in my ears--or, so it seemed.

For an instant I opened my eyes. It appeared that a stream of blasting
flame passed before them. I was blinded.

But, providentially, I was composed. I knew what I was about--rather,
what was happening to me--each moment. I struggled to reach the knife I
wore at my belt; but every second I grew weaker. The compression around
my chest was like that of a tightening band of iron.

Of course, only seconds elapsed; but it seemed a very, very long time.
Would the whale ever reach the bottom? Would the line ever sag? Far gone
as I was, my brain remained perfectly clear and I was ready to make use
of the least fortunate incident in my favor.

Then it came--the slackening of the line. I drove forward with a mighty
kick of my feet--a last gasp of strength. My fingers closed on the
handle of the gully, I ripped it out of its sheath, and slashed the
keen blade across the line.

I cut my wrist a bit in so doing. Luckily, I cut ahead of the arm
entangled in the line; it was more by good luck than good management.

My remembrances after that are confused. I know I shot upward from the
dreadful depths, the human body being so much more buoyant than the salt
sea. I lost consciousness slowly. All I finally remember was an
enlarging spot of light toward which I mounted but which seemed to be
miles and miles away!

I was suffocating. A gurgling spasm seized upon me. Light, and sense,
and all were quenched suddenly. Life was slipping from my grasp.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH WE REALIZE THE "GRIND" OF THE WHALEMAN'S LIFE

According to Ben Gibson, they immediately gave me up for dead. The
chance that my arm had not been torn away from the shoulder was small,
and once thus crippled they expected th