ACCIDENTS BY BOAT-LINES. 121 



Sometimes, when the line is nearly spent, 

 and there is great danger of losing the whale 

 by having it all run out, the disposition to hold 

 on has been fatally indulged too far, and the 

 boat taken down. I have heard of one boat 

 being thus lost on the "False Banks," and her 

 whole crew drowned. And very lately the 

 whaling bark, Janet, of Westport, lost her cap- 

 tain and a boat's crew of five men, they being 

 all carried down and drowned by the boat-line 

 getting foul while they were fast to a whale. 



In the present instance, before taking all 

 their line, the whale began to ascend, and as 

 it became slackened, the line was hauled in 

 "hand over hand," by the boat's crew, and 

 coiled away by the boat-steerer. The moment 

 the whale came to the surface, "he went smok- 

 ing off like a locomotive with an express." 

 They held manfully to the line, and with oars 

 peaked, ready to be seized in a moment, they 

 dashed along in the track of the whale. Had 

 they been fast yoked to a team of wild horses 

 on a plank road, their rate of travelling could 

 hardly have been quicker. Mile-stones, trees, 



