Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif,
or any other recognized symbol of possession; so long as the party
wailing it plainly evince their ability at any time to take it alongside,
as well as their intention so to do.
These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen
themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks--
the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright
and honorable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases,
where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim
possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party.
But others are by no means so scrupulous.
Some fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover
litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth
that after a hard chase of a whale in the Northern seas;
and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had succeeded in harpooning
the fish; they were at last, through peril of their lives,
obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat itself.
Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another ship)
came up with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and finally
appropriated it before the very eyes of the plaintiffs.
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