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.
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