- end_line
- 11222
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-23T15:41:04.721Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 11165
- text
- rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch in
thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice, which
will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very much of a
concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the
American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a
prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.
Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the
tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything.
This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First:
In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a
neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to
threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the
harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug
of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the first
boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This
arrangement is indispensable for common safety’s sake; for were the
lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the
whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking
minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed
boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of
the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.
Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is
taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is
again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise
upon the loom or handle of every man’s oar, so that it jogs against his
wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately
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.
- title
- Chunk 1