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.
CHAPTER 63
The Crotch
Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs.
So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters.
The crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention.
It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet
in length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard
gunwale near the bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest
for the wooden extremity of the harpoons, whose other naked,
barbed end slopingly projects from the prow.
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