But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling
spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which
he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause
which at first the intervening distance obscured from us.
But at length we perceived that by one of the unimaginable accidents
of the fishery, this whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line
that he towed; he had also run away with the cutting-spade in him;
and while the free end of the rope attached to that weapon,
had permanently caught in the coils of the harpoon-line round
his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose from his flesh.
So that tormented to madness, he was now churning through the water,
violently flailing with his flexible tail, and tossing the keen
spade about him, wounding and murdering his own comrades.
This terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their
stationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake
began to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted
by half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly
to heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished;
in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central circles
began to swim in thickening clusters.
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