Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line
is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there,
is again carried forward the entire length of the boat,
resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar,
so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing
between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales,
to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of
the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill,
prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight
festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again;
and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon
the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still
a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp--
the rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon;
but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry
mystifications too tedious to detail.
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction.
All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions;
so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers,
with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs.
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