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MOBY DICK; OR 
of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five 
are successful : no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly 
cursed and disrated ; no wonder that some of them actually burst their 
blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some Sperm whalemen are 
absent four years with four barrels ; no wonder that to many ship 
owners, whaling is but a losing concern ; for it is the harpooneer that 
makes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how 
can you expect to find it there when most wanted! 
Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant, 
that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer 
likewise start to running fore and aft to the imminent jeopardy of 
themselves and every one else. It is then they change places ; and the 
headsman, the chief officer of the little craft, takes his proper station 
in the bows of the boat. 
Now, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both 
foolish and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows 
from first to last ; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no 
rowing whatever should be expected of him except under circumstances 
obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve 
a slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various 
whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast 
majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so 
much the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the 
harpooneer that has caused them. 
To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of 
this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from 
out of toil. 
CHAPTER LXII 
THE CROTCH 
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, 
in productive subjects, grow the chapters. 
The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent men- 
tion. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in 
