 by repeated loud and intrepid
exclamations; and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while
all the other muscles are strained and half started - what that is none know but
those who have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very
recklessly at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state, then,
with his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the
exciting cry - »Stand up, and give it to him!« He now has to drop and secure his
oar, turn round on his centre half-way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and
with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the
whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of
fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many
hapless harpooneers are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them
actually burst their blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm
whalemen are absent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many
ship-owners whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer that makes
the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can you expect to
find it there when most wanted!
    Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant, that
is, when the whale starts to run, the boat-header and harpooneer likewise start
to running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and everyone
else. It is then they change places; and the headsman, the chief officer of the
little craft, takes his proper station in the bows of the boat.
    Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish and
unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last; he should
both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should be expected
of him, except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman. I know that this
would sometimes involve a slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience
in various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much the
speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that has
caused them.
    To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this world
must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of
