He attempted to descend, but his debility from loss of blood prevented him going but a few feet below the surface; he lay and rolled, opening wide his huge jaws, displaying his flabby tongue, lashing the water with his gigantic flukes, and bellowing like a whole bevy of mad bulls, from the intense pain he suffered in dying. The other boats, on coming up, fastened, and soon the bloody discharge from his spout holes became thicker, until it had obtained the consistency of tar, when the suffering brute, moderating its bellowing to gasps and sobs, slowly described a circle, throwing its head toward the sun, and after a brief but terrific struggle, rolled fin out, without life or motion. We then cut a hole through the flukes and towed him in triumph to the ship. I will now, before going farther, describe the demeanor of a boat’s crew when fast to a whale. In the first place the officer goes close enough to the whale to give the boatsteerer a good opportunity to strike him. As soon as the irons leave his hand the head of the boat is thrown from the whale, to avoid the sweep of his tremendous tail, which he invariably exercises the moment he is struck. The officer and boatsteerer now exchange positions, the boatsteerer assuming the management of the boat, whilst the officer takes his position in the bows, and, by the assistance of the bow oarsman, clears away a lance, preparatory to striking the fatal blow. The whale, on being struck, either sounds, or rushes with great rapidity over the surface of the water. In either case the line runs out with marvellous rapidity, and water is continually poured upon it to prevent the wood from igniting by friction. Shortly afterwards, if the whale has moderated his speed, the line is manned by all the crew of the boat, with the exception of the boatsteerer and after-oarsman, who are busily occupied coiling it away in the stern sheets of the boat, so as to prevent its entangling, if again run out by the whale, and the boat is hauled close to him, so as to give the officer an opportunity to lance and despatch him. If he shows a good chance, this is the work of but a few minutes, and the monster is turned up with little or no trouble; but it often happens that hours intervene, before you have an opportunity to kill the whale, and oftentimes are obliged to cut, from the near approach of nightfall. But to return to our whale. We got him alongside, and made him fast by a strong chain, encircling his flukes, passed through the hawse-hole, and secured to the bitts on the forecastle; then a hole was cut close to the whale’s eye, the tackles attached, the cutting fall taken to the windlass, and with a merry song we bowsed his jacket in, stripping the blubber from the carcass, and allowing the latter, with the flukes, to go adrift. Next the head was hove in and lashed on the quarter-deck, then several men with axes split the bone from the jaw, to which it was attached by an adhesive substance known as