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 harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly
projects from the prow. Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to
its hurler, who snatches it up as readily from its rest as a
backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall.
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