y sit at
the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme
pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a
common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs
in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat
again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled
upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a
little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp--the rope
which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that
connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious
to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid
eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest
snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal
woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies,
and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any
unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible
contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus
circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones
to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit--strange thing! what
cannot habit accomplish?--Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes,
and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you
will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus
hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before
King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death,
with a halter around every neck, as you may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for
those repeated whaling disasters--some few of which are casually
chronicled--of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the
line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in
the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings
of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and
wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the
heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and
you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning;
and only by a certain