The Dart
A word concerning an incident in the last chapter.
According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat
pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as
temporary steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling
the foremost oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs
a strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish;
for often, in what is called a long dart, the heavy implement
has to be flung to the distance of twenty or thirty feet.
But however prolonged and exhausting the chase, the harpooneer is
expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost; indeed, he is
expected to set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not only
by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations;
and what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's compass,
while all the other muscles are strained and half started--
what that is none know but those who have tried it.
For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very recklessly
at one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state,
then, with his back to the fish, all at once the exhausted
harpooneer hears the exciting cry--"Stand up, and give it to him!"
He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on his centre
half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little
strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale.
No wonder, taking the whole fleet 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 insure 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.
