attached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the line
being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly
among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then, more whales
are close round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But sperm
whales are not every day encountered; while you may, then, you must
kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing
them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it
is, that at times like these the drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat
was furnished with three of them. The first and second were successfully
darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by the
enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg. They were cramped like
malefactors with the chain and ball. But upon flinging the third, in the
act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught under one
of the seats of the boat, and in an instant tore it out and carried it
away, dropping the oarsman in the boat's bottom as the seat slid from
under him. On both sides the sea came in at the wounded planks, but we
stuffed two or three drawers and shirts in, and so stopped the leaks for
the time.

It had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were
it not that as we advanced into the herd, our whale's way greatly
diminished; moreover, that as we went still further and further from the
circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So that
when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale sideways
vanished; then, with the tapering force of his parting momentum, we
glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the shoal, as if
from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake. Here
the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard
but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth
satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture
thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now
in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every
commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of
the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight
or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of
horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic
circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middl