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where it is often difficult, and in many instances impossible, 
to take them. Such situations afford refuge to the fish 
when alarmed or wounded, and enable them to flee beyond 
the reach of their pursuers ; finding sufficient openings 
to allow them to respire, they can drag thither after them 
any quantity of line, which the fishers are obliged generally 
to cut, and thus to abandon the whale, lest the boat and 
crew should be drawn under the ice. To prevent such 
calamity to the crew, and, at the same time, not to forego 
all chance of securing the fish, when the boat’s complement 
of lines are all run out, and no further supply is at hand, it 
is sometimes a practice with the fishers, on being drawn to 
the edge of the ice, to abandon the boat in the hope that 
it may serve as a buoy to recover the materials, and also 
the fish*; in preference to cutting the line ; this risk, often 
resorted to, is by fishers termed, giving a whale the boat'* 
Captain Scoresby in speaking of pack fishing, states, that 
instances have occurred of fish having been entangled 
during forty or fifty hours, and having escaped after all ; 
and of ships having lost the greatest part of their stock of 
lines, several of their boats, and even, though happily less 
commonly, some individuals of their crews. 
Captain Taylor, who formerly commanded the Buncombe, 
and who sailed with me in the Baffin, assured me, that in 
one voyage while he was master of that ship, he had lost 
sixteen large fish which he had struck, with his lines and 
harpoons, from their effecting their escape under such ice. 
And I myself saw the Trafalgar strike a fish which we after- 
wards heard was lost from a similar cause ; now these 
losses I have no doubt might be materially remedied, and 
each other, where the extent of the mass, though considerable, can 
be discerned. 
* This plan was adopted by the Trafalgar, and we were after- 
wards so fortunate as to capture the fish, boat and lines. 
P 
