Mr. Baker was an accomplished swearer, a linguist of parts. I did not know there was such a variety of oaths in the language until I heard him swearing at his crew, urging them to heave, and calling them more vile names than you would think any men would be willing to hear quietly. Swearing was very general on the Clearchus, and none of Mr. Baker’s language was to be taken seriously, which, of course, the men knew. I do not know what it is about the sea that prompts men to swear, but there must be something. Most of them get so that they cannot make the simplest remark without an oath. I was getting into the habit myself, although I had never been accustomed to using such language or to hearing it. Before I left home I had tried once or twice saying “Damn!” with inward quakings, and half expecting to see the heavens fall; now I said “Damn!” and other things quite fluently, without quakings of any kind, and before I got home I {178} was a confirmed swearer. It is a bad habit, and weakens what is said rather than strengthening it. When I realized this I broke myself of the habit. Mr. Brown was no swearer, nor was Mr. Macy, nor Peter Bottom, nor the Prince, all of whom I admired, each according to his fashion. With all Mr. Baker’s flow of language, his crew did not gain an inch more than we did; but the heaving must have had its effect on the whale. There was still a good deal of line out, perhaps fifteen or twenty fathoms, when he seemed to stop suddenly. There was a general cry of “Flukes!” and his flukes went into the air, and he sounded. When Starbuck had struck, as I have said, he was a trifle late. He succeeded in getting one iron fast—in the small—but had to heave the other overboard. This second harpoon had been skittering over the waves ever since, here and there, according to its whim. It had not touched our line, although Mr. Brown had been afraid that it would; and it might easily have touched our line, for a whale swims low in the water, and there is seldom any part of him continually visible aft of his hump, so that there is nothing in the way. But the harpoon had touched Mr. Baker’s line several times—a good many times; each touch lasting but an instant, like the bite of a shark. A harpoon is even sharper than a shark’s tooth, and each touch had severed some of the tough strands. It was a wonder that the line had survived the heaving. It must have only just survived. When the whale sounded, Mr. Baker did not give him line, but was holding until last second. This may have been the proverbial last straw, or it may have been simply that the time had come for the line to part. At any rate, it parted. Mr. Baker cursed fluently in a really heartfelt way, and the line was rapidly hauled in. The last fathom of it was a mere feather of manila.