166 CHASE AND CAPTURE 
hausted, from the blood which flows from his deep and 
dangerous wounds, and the 200 fathoms of line belonging 
to the overturned boat, which he is dragging after him 
through the water, checks him in his course ; his pur- 
suers again overtake him, and another harpoon is darted 
and buried deeply in his flesh. 
The men who were upset, now right their own boat 
without assistance from the others, by merely clinging on 
one side of her, by which she is turned over, while one 
of them gets inside and bales out the water rapidly w T ith 
his hat, by which their boat is freed, and she is soon 
again seen in the chase. 
The fatal lance is at length given,— the blood gushes 
from the nostril of the unfortunate animal in a thick black 
stream, which stains the clear blue water of the ocean to 
a considerable distance around the scene of the affray. 
In its struggles the blood from the nostril is frequently 
thrown upon the men in the boats, who glory in its show ! 
The immense creature may now again endeavour to 
“ sound ” to escape from his unrelenting pursuers ; but 
it is powerless,— it soon rises to the surface, and passes 
slowly along until the death pang seizes it, when its 
appearance is awful in the extreme. 
Suffering from suffocation, or some other stoppage of 
some important organ, the whole strength of its enor- 
mous frame is set in motion for a few r seconds, when his 
convulsions throw him into a hundred different contor- 
tions of the most violent description, by which the sea 
is beaten into foam, and boats are sometimes crushed to 
atoms, with their crews, {see frontispiece). 
