its bows and the flukes to quite a hundred feet.  Nothing could better show the hardy characters of the whalers than the picture then presented by Roswell Gardiner and his companions.  In the midst of the Atlantic, leagues from their vessel, and no other boat in sight, there they sat patiently waiting the moment when the giant of the deep should abate in his speed, or in his antics, to enable them to approach and complete their capture.  Most of the men sat with their arms crossed, and bodies half-turned, regarding the scene, while the two officers, the master and boat-steerer, if the latter could properly be thus designated, watched each evolution with a keenness of vigilance that let nothing like a sign or a symptom escape them.

Such was the state of things, the whale still threshing the sea with his flukes, when a cry among his men induced Roswell for a moment to look aside.  There came Daggett fast to a small bull, which was running directly in the wind’s eye with great speed, dragging the boat after him, which was towing astern at a distance of something like two hundred fathoms.  At first, Roswell thought he should be compelled to cut from his whale, so directly towards his own boat did the other animal direct his course.  But, intimidated, most probably, by the tremendous blows with which the larger bull continued to belabour the ocean, the smaller animal sheered away in time to avoid a collision, though he now began to circle the spot where his dreaded monarch lay.  This change of course gave rise to a new source of apprehension.  If the smaller bull should continue to encircle the larger, there was great reason to believe that the line of Daggett might get entangled with the boat of Gardiner, and produce a collision that might prove fatal to all there.  In order to be ready to meet this danger, Roswell ordered his crew to be on the look-out, and to have their knives in a state for immediate use.  It was not known what might have been the consequence of this circular movement as respects the two boats; for, before they could come together, Daggett’s line actually passed into the mouth of Gardiner’s whale, and drawing up tight into the angle of his jaws, set the monster in motion with a momentum and power that caused the iron to draw from the smaller whale, which by this time had more than half encircled the animal.  So rapid was the rate of running now, that Roswell was obliged to let out line, his whale sounding to a prodigious depth.  Daggett did the same unwilling to cut as long as he could hold on to his line.

At the expiration of five minutes the large bull came up again for breath, with both lines still fast to him; the one in the regular way, or attached to the harpoon, and the other jammed in the jaws of the animal by means of the harpoon and staff, which formed a sort of toggle at the angle of his enormous mouth.  In consequence of feeling this unusual tenant, the fish compressed its jaws together, thus rendering the fastening so much the more secure.  As both boats had let run line freely while the whale was sounding, they now found themselves near a quarter of a mile astern of him, towing along, side by side, and not fifty feet asunder.  If the spirit of rivalry had been aroused among the crew of these two boats before, it was now excited to a degree that menaced acts of hostility.