THE AMERICAN WHALE-FISHERY. 197 
see that lie is tir'd, they kill him outright with launces. In doing this is the 
greatest danger, for the first that do fling the harpoon into him are drawn along by 
the whale, and are at a good distance from him, but those that kill him with 
launces are as well upon his body as at his sides, according as the whale turns and 
winds himself, and they receive many severe blows. Here the steerman must take 
care to observe how the whale runs and turns himself about, that the harpoonier 
may reach him with his launces ; all the other men in the sloops row diligently, 
sometimes forwards, and sometimes backwards, which they call rowing on and strik- 
ing, and when the whale lifts up himself out of the water, he commonly doth strike 
about with his tail and fins, that the water dasheth up like dust. A long-boat he 
values no more than dust, for he can beat it all into shatters at a blow ; but a 
great ship is too hard for him, and if he strikes against it with his tail, he feels it 
more than the ship, for he doth so paint the ship with his own blood, that it maketh 
him very feeble. A good steerman is next unto the harpoonier most useful in the 
sloop ; he steers with one oar and doth look out before ; the other four men turn 
their back to the head, and look towards the stern, therefore doth the steerman 
and harpoonier always cry, row on, or strike, that is to say, row near to the whale, 
or else keep farther off. The launces have a wooden stick or handle above two 
fathoms long, or somewhat shorter than a pikestaff; the iron thereof is commonly 
a fathom long, and pointed before like unto a pike ; it is made of steel or tough 
iron, that it may bend without breaking. For after you have made a deep hole in 
his body with your launces, you poke into it with them one way and the other 
way, as they do when they poke for eels, but if he doth get one or more out 
of your hands, you take another, for every sloop hath at least five, six, or seven, 
and yet sometimes he has them all out of three, four, or more boats sticking in 
his body. 
"After the whale is killed they cut off his tail; some keep the tail and fins, 
and hang them up at the outside of their ship, for that defends them from the ice 
when it presseth upon the ship. The tail hinders the boat in its course, because 
it doth lye across, and that is the reason why they cut it off. Before the tail they 
fasten a piece of a rope, and at the other end at the stern of the last sloop. 
There is in all four or five sloops fastened to one another behind, and so they row 
one behind the other to the great ship. "When they have brought the whale to the 
ship, they tye it with ropes fast to the ship ; that part where the tail is cut off 
they fasten to the fore -part of the ship, and the head towards the stern, about 
the middle, near the great shrowds of the mainmast on the larboard of the ship ; 
it is seldom that a whale doth reach farther than from the poop to the middle of 
