There is the whaleboat, the men sitting motionless in their seats, the long oars apeak, shooting through the water, towed by the whale unseen underneath the surface. Sometimes two or three boats hitch on, for the more the whale has to drag the sooner he becomes exhausted. Now they haul in on him and carefully coil the wet line in the tubs. Closer and closer they near him, the passage of the great mass under water being marked by swirls and eddies on the surface. Our herculean king, “Black Jake,” is at the bow, the round, razor-edged, long-handled lance lying by him, his back to the crew, his eye on the eddies, his great bare black arms, now the right, now the left--moving first in one direction, then another, as thus he signals to the steersman the direction in which to keep the boat’s head; for although we are being towed as a tug would tow a skiff, we must be kept as near as possible in a line with the submerged motive power, and then, with a swash and snort, out of the water six feet ahead comes twenty, may be forty feet of that great black mass! It is astonishing how much there is of him. And he is down and under, with his great gulp of air, in less time than it takes to write or even speak these last twenty words, but not before the lance is out of Jake’s hands, driven three feet into his side, and hauled aboard again by the light, strong line attached. Suddenly the whale line slacks. The boat ceases its rush through the water. The eddy and swirl ahead cease. Now look out for squalls. This is one of Mrs. Grayback’s peculiar tricks. She is ambushed somewhere below. She designs coming up under the boat’s bottom, and constituting herself into a submarine island of flesh, bobbing up like a released cork. She is resolving herself into a submarine earthquake, and proposes to send that boat and crew ten feet into the air, or capsizing them off her India-rubber back. One hundred or five hundred tons of wicked intelligence is thus groping about in the unseen depths for the purpose of attaining the proper position, and, as it were, exploding herself like an animated torpedo. Every seat in the boat is an anxious seat. There is no talking, but a great deal of unpleasant anticipation. Those who have seen the thing done before, await in dread suspense the shock and upset. It’s very much like being over a powder-magazine about to explode. To keep up the interest let us leave his particular boat and situation _in statu quo_. Your imagination may complete the catastrophe or not, as you choose. Final consummations are not desirable in a thrilling tale, and this tale is meant to be thrilling. Therefore, if you’ve got a thrill in you, please thrill.