THE AMERICAN WHALE-FISHERY. 197 



see that he 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 makcth 

 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 ci-y, row on, or strike, that is to say, row near to the whale, 

 or else keep farther oif. 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 bout 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 



