278 WIlALE-FISHEliy. 



assistance of one boat with six lines or upward, that 

 it would need any more. 



Several ships being about us, there was a possi- 

 bility that some person miglit attack and make a 

 prize of the whale, when it had so far escaped us, 

 that we no longer retained any hold of it ; as such, 

 we set all the sail the ship could safely sustain, and 

 worked through several narrow and intricate channels 

 in the ice, in the direction I observed the fish had re- 

 treated. After a little time, it was descried by the 

 people in the boats, at a considerable distance to the 

 eastward; a general chase immediately commenced, 

 and within the space of an hour three harpoons were 

 struck. We now imagined the fish was secure, but 

 our expectations were premature. The whale reso- 

 lutely pushed beneath a large floe that had been re- 

 cently broken to pieces, by the swell, and soon drew 

 all the lines out of the second fast-boat ; the officer 

 of which, not being able to get any assistance, tied 

 the end of his line to a hummock of ice and broke 

 it. Soon afterwards, the other two boats, still fast, 

 were dragged against the broken floe, when one of 

 the harpoons drew out. The lines of only one boat, 

 therefore, remained fast to the fish, and this with six 

 or eight lines out, was dragged forward into the shat- 

 tered floe with astonishing force. Pieces of ice, each 

 of which were sufficiently large to have answered the 

 purpose of a mooring for a ship, were wheeled about 

 by the strength of the whale ; and such was the ten- 



