is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he
assigns it.

By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious
creature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish,
to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would seem to belong,
but only as the Anak of the tribe.

CHAPTER 60. The Line.

With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as
for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented,
I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary
ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to
the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the
sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity
too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must
be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general
by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it
may give it compactness and gloss.

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost
entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not
so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and
I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things), is much more
handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark
fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian
to behold.

The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment
its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and
twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal
to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something
over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally
coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so
as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or
layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart,"
or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least
tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take
somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used
in stowing