Chapter 62.00: CHAPTER 60. The Line.

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CHAPTER 60. The Line.
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With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as
for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I
have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly
vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary
ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to
the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the
sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too
much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be
subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no
means adds to the rope’s durability or strength, however much it may give
it compactness and gloss.

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely
superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable
as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add
(since there is an æsthetics in all things), is much more handsome and
becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of
Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold.

The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight,
you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one
and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty
pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three
tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two
hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away
in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form
one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded “sheaves,” or layers of
concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the “heart,” or minute
vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or
kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody’s arm,
leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line
in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this
business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards
through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it
from all possible wrinkles and twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line being
continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this; because
these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat, and do
not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet in
diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a
craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness; for the bottom of
the whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up a considerable
distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When the
painted canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub, the boat looks
as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present
to the whales.

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an
eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub,
and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This
arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order
to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring
boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to
carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. In these
instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were,
from the one boat to the other; though the first boat always hovers at
hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable for
common safety’s sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way
attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the
end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not
stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him
into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever
find her again.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken
aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again carried
forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or
handle of every man’s oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing;
and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite
gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of
the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill,
prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight
festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some
ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the
bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and
is then attached to the short-warp—the rope which is immediately
connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp
goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen
are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the
landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes
sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for
the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while
straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant
the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in
play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a
shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a
shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! What cannot habit accomplish? —Gayer
sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never
heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white
cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman’s nooses; and, like the
six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew
pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may
say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those
repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of
this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost.
For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like
being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in
full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you.
It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils,
because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and
the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain
self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can
you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing
sun himself could never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies
of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed,
the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in
itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the
ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it
silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual
play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any
other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live
enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but
it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals
realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a
philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel
one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with
a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.