Chương Chương 62 · The Dart.

A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.

According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes

off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary

steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost

oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong,

nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what

is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the

distance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and exhausting

the chase, the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the

uttermost; indeed, he is expected to set an example of superhuman

activity to the rest, not only by incredible rowing, but 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 boatheader and harpooneer

likewise start to running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of

themselves and every one 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 insure 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 toil.