Thenceforward the navigation
was free from difficulty, or at least none that we could
recognize as such, so we gave all our attention to the business
which brought us there.
Scarcely any change was needed in our equipment, except the
substitution of longer harpoons for those we had been using, and
the putting away of the bomb-guns. These changes were made
because the blubber of the bowhead is so thick that ordinary
harpoons will not penetrate beyond it to the muscle, which,
unless they do, renders them liable to draw, upon a heavy strain.
As for the bombs, Yankees hold the mysticetae in such supreme
contempt that none of them would dream of wasting so expensive a
weapon as a bomb upon them. I was given to understand by my
constant crony, Mistah Jones, that there was no more trouble in
killing a bowhead than in slaughtering a sheep; and that while it
was quite true that accidents DID occur, they were entirely due
to the carelessness or clumsiness of the whalemen, and not in any
way traceable to a desire on the victim's part to do any one
harm.
The sea was little encumbered with ice, it being now late in
June, so that our progress was not at all impeded by the few
soft, brashy floes that we encountered, none of them hard enough
to do a ship's hull any damage.
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