OF THE SPERM WHALE. 
179 
When the hour and ten minutes had again nearly past, 
the nine boats were nearly abreast of each other, and not 
much separated, so that the success of first striking the 
whale depended very much upon the swiftest boat, espe- 
cially if the whale carne up a-head. We had now all 
the boats on our “lee beam,” while the ships were all 
astern of us, the most distant not being more than half 
a mile*, so that we enjoyed an excellent view of this most 
exciting and animated scene. True to his time, the 
leviathan at length arose right a-head of the boats, and 
at not more than a quarter of a mile distant from them. 
The excitement among the crews of the various boats 
when they saw his first spout was tremendous ; they did 
not shout, but we could hear an agitated murmur from 
their united voices reverberating along the surface of the 
deep. They flew over the limpid waves at a rapid rate ; 
the mates of the various boats cheered their respective 
crews by various urgent exclamations, “Swing on your 
oars my boys, for the honour of the Henrietta,” cried 
one ; “ Spring away, hearties,” shouted another, and yet 
scarcely able to breathe from anxiety and exertion. “ It’s 
our fish,” vociferated a third, as he passed the rest of his 
opponents but a trifling distance. “ Lay on my boys,” 
cried young Clark, our first mate, as he steered the boat 
with one hand, and pressed down the after oar with the 
other. “ She’ll be ours yet ; let’s have a strong pull, a 
long pull, and a pull altogether,” he exclaimed, as he 
panted from his exertions at the after oar, which soon 
brought up his boat quite abreast of the foremost. 
But the giant of the ocean, who was only a short dis- 
