124 
GREENLAND VOYAGE. 
flew over his arm, in an instant dragged him over¬ 
board, and plunged him under water, to rise no 
more! So sudden was the accident, that only- 
one man, who had his eye upon him at the time, 
was aware of what had happened; so that when the 
boat righted, which it immediately did, though 
half full of water, they all at once, on looking round 
at an exclamation from the man who had seen him 
launched overboard, enquired what had got Carr ! 
It is scarcely possible to imagine a death more 
awfully sudden and unexpected. The murder¬ 
ous bullet, when it makes its way through the air 
with a velocity that renders it invisible, and seems 
not to require a moment for its flight, rarely pro¬ 
duces so instantaneous destruction. The velocity 
of the whale on its first descent, is usually (as I 
have proved by experiment) about 8 or 9 miles 
per hour, or 13 to 15 feet per second. Now, as 
this unfortunate man was occupied in adjusting 
the line at the very water’s edge, when it must 
have been perfectly tight, in consequence of the 
obstruction to its running out of the boat, the in¬ 
terval between the fastening of the line about 
him and his disappearance, could not have ex¬ 
ceeded the third-part of a second of time ; for in 
one second only, he must have been dragged to 
the depth of 10 or 12 feet! The accident was, in¬ 
deed, so instantaneous, that he had not time for 
