STOVE BOATS AND DEAD WHALES I49 



with a line attached to his barbless lance was successively 

 casting it at the rearmost whale and retrieving it into his 

 hands. Jacob's boat had still not made contact. One 

 by one the cachalots were sounding but Thomas knew 

 that they must be winded after their fast swim and would 

 soon be up again to blow and fill their lungs. All this he 

 observed in the few seconds that he took his eyes from the 

 whale-line. 



'Haul in, haul in!' he called as he felt the line slacken in 

 his hand; and he ran along the thwarts to take up his 

 position for lancing in the bows, while Jamie took his place 

 in the stern (hence the harpooner's alternative name of 

 'boatsteerer' and the mate's of 'boatheader'). 



Then directly below him in the blue depths Thomas saw 

 something large and white rising quickly to the surface. 

 It was the inside of the bull whale's wide open mouth. 



*Vast hauling and stern all!' he shouted. 



Before his crew could execute the order the whale's 

 lower jaw, rising uppermost as the monster rolled on its 

 back, grated the boat's midships planks on one side whilst 

 the bulky upper jaw appeared from the water on the 

 other. 



The boat, held in the whale's mouth, was lifted clean 

 out of the water and the men scrambled to the bow and 

 stern. Then the jaws closed with a snap and the craft fell 

 back into the water in two shattered halves. 



Thomas came to the surface unhurt among a mass of 

 splintered wreckage. He saw Jamie and two others 

 clinging to the severed stern and caught the collar of Sam 

 his negro oarsman as he was about to bid farewell to the 

 whaling life. Alas, the little Portuguese who manned 

 the second oar had already done so, for the only sign of 

 him was his straw hat floating sadly nearby. The whale- 

 line had apparently escaped being broken, for the bow 

 half of the boat had been towed under by the whale. 

 Even as he made this last observation Thomas saw the 



