258 
MOBY DICK; OR 
tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes 
a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch 
in thickness; for the bottom of the whale boat is like critical ice, 
which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very 
much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is 
clapped on the American line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling 
off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales. 
Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an 
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side oi the 
tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. 
This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. 
First: 'in order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line 
from a neighbouring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so 
deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached 
to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted 
like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though 
the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: 
This arrangement is indispensable for common safety’s sake; for 
were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, 
and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a 
single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop 
there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him 
into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would 
ever find her again. 
Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the 
line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead 
there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting 
crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man’s oar, so that it jogs 
against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as 
they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks 
or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden 
pin or skewer the siz& of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. 
From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and 
is then passed inside the boat again ; and some ten or twenty fathoms 
(called box-line) being coiled upon the box, in the bows, it con- 
tinues its way to the gunwale still a little farther aft, and is then 
