“The boat will be at the mercy of chance among all those tails, and we are not lucky enough to throw at random.  No; since the beggars have taken to dancing, for a change, let them dance all night; to-morrow they shall pay the piper.”  How, at peep of day, the man at the mast-head saw ten whales about two leagues off on the weather-bow; how the ship tacked and stood toward them; how she weathered on one of monstrous size, and how he and the other youngsters were mad to lower the boat and go after it, and how the captain said:  “Ye lubbers, can’t ye see that is a right whale, and not worth a button?  Look here away over the quarter at this whale.  See how low she spouts.  She is a sperm whale, and worth seven hundred pounds if she was only dead and towed alongside.”

“‘That she shall be in about a minute,’ cried one; and, indeed, we were all in a flame; the boat was lowered, and didn’t I worship the skipper when he told me off to be one of her crew!

“I was that eager to be in at that whale’s death, I didn’t recollect there might be smaller brutes in danger.

“Just before the oars fell into the water, the skipper looked down over the bulwarks, and says he to one of us that had charge of the rope that is fast to the boat at one end and to the harpoon at the other, ’Now, Jack you are a new hand; mind all I told you last night, or your mother will see me come ashore without you, and that will vex her; and, my lads, remember, if there is a single lubberly hitch in that line, you will none of you come up the ship’s side again.’

“‘All right, captain,’ says Jack, and we pulled off singing,

     “’And spring to your oars, and, make your boat fly,
       And when you come near her beware of her eye,’

till the coxswain bade us hold our lubberly tongues, and not frighten the whales; however, we soon found we wanted all our breath for our work, and more too.”  Then David painted the furious race after the whale, and how the boat gradually gained, and how at last, as he was grinding his teeth and pulling like mad, he heard a sound ahead like a hundred elephants wallowing; and now he hoped to see the harpooner leave his oar, and rise and fling his weapon; “but that instant, up flukes, a tower of fish was seen a moment in the air, with a tail-fin at the top of it just about the size of this room we are sitting in, ladies, and down the whale sounded; then it was pull on again in her wake, according as she headed in sounding; pull for the dear life; and after a while the oarsmen saw the steerman’s eyes, prying over the sea, turn like hot coals.  The men caught fire at this, and put their very backbones into each stroke, and the boat skimmed and flew.  Suddenly the steersman cried out fiercely, ’Stand up, harpoon!  Up rose the harpooner, his eye like a hot coal now.  The men saw nothing; they must pull fiercer than ever.  The harpooner balanced his iron, swayed his body lightly, and the harpoon hissed from him.  A soft thud—­then a heaving of the water all round, a slap that sounded like a church tower falling flat upon an acre of boards, and drenched, and blinded, and half smothered us all in spray, and at the same moment away whirled the boat, dancing and kicking in the whale’s foaming, bubbling wake, and we holding on like grim death by the thwarts, not to be spun out into the sea.”