"Which meant, of course, that the whales had sounded. There was nothing to do except to wait for them to come up again. They staid down a pretty long time, which proved that they were big ones, and then they came up half a mile dead to leeward of us. We set our little boat sail, there was a fairly good breeze, and we went dancing over the waves toward the whales at a good pace. The first mate of the _Two Cousins_ had the weather-gage of us, and he had the smallest whale. The one we were heading for was a regular old leviathan. "'Get in your sail,' whispered the boat-steerer. "It was done with great caution. "'Now a good stroke, starboard, to pull her round.' "We were now in a position to go up to his whaleship without being seen; so the boat-steerer says: "'Now, lads, give way with a will. Jump her; jump her!' "We dashed our oars, and the boat sprang forward. "'Now!' "The iron was thrown with a whiz, and as quick as a flash--yes, as quick as a mouse could dart into his hole--the whale went down into the sea. The line ran out of the tub fast enough to make you dizzy. All of a sudden--how, I never could tell--there was a kink in the line, and it fouled for a second in the bow chock. Such a thing meant destruction to the boat, and as quick as thought I, being bowman, grabbed the axe and cut the line. "'Blast you!' yelled the boat-steerer; 'what did you do that for?' "'Do you want to be towed under?' I said. 'I should think we'd had enough towing.' "'Well,' says he, cooling down a bit, 'there's a fine whale gone off with a good iron in him.' "The other boats did not have much better luck than we did, seeing that their whales got frightened and began to run. They chased the brutes for two hours, and couldn't get anywhere near them. Then it commenced to get late, and the ship hoisted the waif--" "What's that?" asked Farmer Joe. "That's the boat recall in a whaler," answered Handsome; "and when it went up we had to go back to the ship, where we were jawed by the Captain, and made fun of by the rest of the crew. Still, we didn't mind that so very much, because, you know, it's pretty likely to be turn about in a whaler, and you can't ever tell when an accident is going to happen to the oldest hand. It was three days before we saw a whale again. I was on lookout, and I caught sight of a spurt of spray away down to leeward. I was hardly sure of it at first, but the next second the whale rose on a sea, and I caught the flash of the sun on his shiny wet back. So I bawled away as usual, "'There blows!' "'Only one?' yelled the Captain. "'That's all, sir,' says I. "'Well,' says he,' we'll make sure of him, anyhow.'