When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the american line-tub,
the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious
great wedding-cake to present to the whales.
Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating
in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against
the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge completely
disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end
is necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate
the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat,
in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten
to carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon.
In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale,
as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the first boat
always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement
is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower
end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were
the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single,
smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there,
for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him
into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier
would ever find her again.
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