[Illustration:  “THERE SHE BLOWS”]

In approaching the whale, every effort is made to come up to him at the point of least danger.  This point is determined partly by the lines of the whale’s vision, partly by his methods of defense.  The right whale can only see dead ahead, and his one weapon is his tail, which gigantic fin, weighing several tons and measuring sometimes twenty feet across the tips of the flukes, he swings with irresistible force and all the agility of a fencer at sword-play.  He, therefore, is attacked from the side, well toward his jaws.  The sperm whale, however, is dangerous at both ends.  His tail, though less elastic than that of the right whale, can deal a prodigious up-and-down blow, while his gigantic jaws, well garnished with sharp teeth, and capacious gullet, that readily could gulp down a man, are his chief terrors.  His eyes, too, set obliquely, enable him to command the sea at all points save dead ahead, and it is accordingly from this point that the fishermen approach him.  But however stealthily they move, the opportunities for disappointment are many.  Big as he is, the whale is not sluggish.  In an instant he may sink bodily from sight; or, throwing his flukes high in air, “sound,” to be seen no more; or, casting himself bodily on the boat, blot it out of existence; or, taking it in his jaws, carry it down with him.  But supposing the whale to be oblivious of its approach, the boat comes as near as seems safe, and the harpooner, poised in the bow, his knee against the bracket that steadies him, lets fly his weapon; and, hit or miss, follows it up at once with a second bent onto the same line.  Some harpooners were of such strength and skill that they could hurl their irons as far as four or five fathoms.  In one famous case boats from an American and British ship were in pursuit of the same whale, the British boat on the inside.  It is the law of the fishery that the whale belongs to the boat that first makes fast—­and many a pretty quarrel has grown out of this rule.  So in this instance—­seeing the danger that his rival might win the game—­the American harpooner, with a prodigious effort, darted his iron clear over the rival boat and deep into the mass of blubber.

[Illustration:  “TAKING IT IN HIS JAWS”]

What a whale will do when struck no man can tell before the event.  The boat-load of puffing, perspiring men who have pulled at full speed up to the monster may suddenly find themselves confronted with a furious, vindictive, aggressive beast weighing eighty tons, and bent on grinding their boat and themselves to powder; or he may simply turn tail and run.  Sometimes he sounds, going down, down, down, until all the line in the boat is exhausted, and all that other boats can bend on is gone too.  Then the end is thrown over with a drag, and his reappearance awaited.  Sometimes he dashes off over the surface of the water at a speed of fifteen knots an hour, towing the boat, while the crew hope that their “Nantucket sleigh-ride”