Meanwhile we were running line faster than ever.  There was an enormous length attached to the animal now—­some twelve thousand feet—­the weight of which was very great, to say nothing of the many “drogues” or “stopwaters” attached to it at intervals.  Judge, then, of my surprise when a shout of “Blo-o-o-w!” called my attention to the whale himself just breaking water about half a mile away.  It was an awkward predicament; for if we let go our end, the others would be on the whale immediately; if we held on, we should certainly be dragged below in a twinkling; and our disengaged boats could do nothing, for they had no line.  But the difficulty soon settled itself.  Out ran our end, leaving us bare of line as pleasure skiffs.  The newcomer, who had been prowling near, keeping a close watch upon us, saw our boat jump up when released from the weight.  Off he flew like an arrow to the labouring leviathan, now a “free fish,” except for such claims as the two first-comers had upon it, which claims are legally assessed, where no dispute arises.  In its disabled condition, dragging so enormous a weight of line, it was but a few minutes before the fresh boat was fast, while we looked on helplessly, boiling with impotent rage.  All that we could now hope for was the salvage of some of our line, a mile and a half of which, inextricably mixed up with about the same length of our rival’s, was towing astern of the fast-expiring cachalot.

So great had been the strain upon that hardly-used animal that he did not go into his usual “flurry,” but calmly expired without the faintest struggle.  In the mean time two of our boats had been sent on board again to work the ship, while the skipper proceeded to try his luck in the recovery of his gear.  On arriving at the dead whale, however, we found that he had rolled over and over beneath the water so many times that the line was fairly frapped round him, and the present possessors were in no mood to allow us the privilege of unrolling it.

During the conversation we had drawn very near the carcass, so near, in fact, that one hand was holding the boat alongside the whale’s “small” by a bight of the line.  I suppose the skipper’s eagle eye must have caught sight of the trailing part of the line streaming beneath, for suddenly he plunged overboard, reappearing almost immediately with the line in his hand.  He scrambled into the boat with it, cutting it from the whale at once, and starting his boat’s crew hauling in.

Then there was a hubbub again.  The captain of the Narragansett, our first rival, protested vigorously against our monopoly of the line; but in grim silence our skipper kept on, taking no notice of him, while we steadily hauled.  Unless he of the Narragansett choose to fight for what he considered his rights, there was no help for him.  And there was something in our old man’s appearance eminently calculated to discourage aggression of any kind.