gside the whale. Off flew
the weapon, impelled by the captain's unerring arm, and buried itself up
to the socket in the fat coating with which the leviathan was clothed.

"It's socket up!" cried old Knowles. "Hurrah, lads--hurrah! our first
whale's struck--good-luck, good-luck--hurrah, hurrah!" The cheer was
taken up by all on board, as well as by those in the boats. They now
gave way with a will after the whale; the harpooner, as another boat got
up, sending his weapon into its side.

But it is no child's play now. The captain had time to dart a lance
into him, when, "Stern all--stern all!" was now the cry of the headsman;
and the crews, with their utmost strength, backed the boats out of the
way of the infuriated animal, which in his agony began to lash the water
with his huge flukes, and strike out in every direction with a force
which would have shattered to atoms any boat they met. Now his vast
head rose completely out of the water--now his tail, as he writhed with
the pain the weapons had inflicted. The whole surface of the
surrounding ocean was lashed into foam by the reiterated strokes of
those mighty flukes, while the boats were deluged with the spray he
threw aloft--the sound of the blows reverberating far away across the
water. The boat-steerer now stood ready to let the lines run through
the loggerhead over the bows of the boat. Should anyone be seized by
their coils as they are running out, his death would be certain. Soon
finding the hopelessness of contending with his enemies above water, the
whale lifted his flukes and sounded.

Down, down he went into the depths of the ocean. Away flew the line
over the bows of the boat. Its rapid motion would have set fire to the
wood, had not the headsman kept pouring water over it, as it passed
through its groove.

An oar was held up from the captain's boat: it was a sign that nearly
the whole of their line, of two hundred fathoms, had run out. With
caution, and yet rapidity, the first mate in the second boat bent on his
line; soon the captain's came to an end, and then that flew out as
rapidly as the first had done. To assist in stopping the whale's
downward course, drogues were now bent on to the line as it ran out; but
they appeared to have little more effect in impeding his progress than a
log-ship has in stopping the way of a vessel; and yet they have, in
reality, much more, as every pound-weight in addition tells on the back
of a racer.

Aga