186 THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES, 



" Danger, whose limbs of giant mould, 

 What mortal eye can fix'd behold ?" 



Besides the multifarious ordinary perils of 

 the sea, there is that incurred in lowering boats 

 so often ; then the risk of being run under and 

 swamped in the lightning-like speed and evolu- 

 tions of a seventy foot whale, immediately upon 

 being struck ; then the danger from a whale's 

 flukes and fins, as the monster slues and slats 

 them round, and makes the deep boil like a 

 pot, to the slightest tap of which a whale-boat 

 is hardly more than a bubble. Sometimes the 

 mammoth brute comes up from the depths 

 right under the boat, and takes it, with all on 

 board, transversely into his huge mouth, that can 

 be opened sixteen and twenty feet. To be sure, 

 the monster does not swallow it, but he crushes 

 it to pieces as if it were an egg shell, and, per- 

 haps, some of its crew at the same time a catas- 

 trophe, at least, always to be apprehended. 



Sometimes a sperm whale will drive " head 

 on " to his captors with such a speed and force 

 that they can neither prick him off with the 

 lance nor have time to sheer away. A blow 



