The sting of the irons only served to make him the more furious and bent upon destruction, and he rushed full-tilt upon Mr. Wallet. Mr. Brown dropped back, the men put aside their paddles, and I saw two or three turns {127} taken about the loggerhead. Then Wright came aft; and Mr. Brown took his place in the bow, with a lance in his hand. A thin wreath of blue smoke rose from the loggerhead, although they were throwing water upon the line. Wright took another turn, and the boat plunged wildly through the sea after the whale. The whale seemed to be annoyed by the drag of the boat all on one side of him. I thought I saw him gnash his jaws, although they were kicking up such a fuss that I could not be sure. The ship was less than half a mile away, and the ship and the whale were slowly working nearer each other. It must have been the drag of the boat which caused the whale to miss Mr. Wallet’s boat, which he did by a very narrow margin, coming up for the attack about an oar’s length from the starboard side, and abeam. That seemed to put him beside himself with fury, and he turned at once upon Mr. Brown, shaking his head and gnashing his jaws. As he turned, George Hall saw his chance and planted his irons deep in his other side. If Mr. Wallet had been of the quality of Hall or of some others of his men, he would have done uniformly better. Hall’s irons served to confuse the whale a little, although not to shake his purpose of destroying Mr. Brown’s boat. He hesitated for an instant, but immediately went on, and disappeared a short distance from the boat. He had not sounded, however, which could be told from the way Mr. Wallet’s line was going out. Hall had changed places with Mr. Wallet, and had three or four turns around the loggerhead, although not enough to check the line entirely. I saw the men in Mr. Brown’s boat back water as hard as they could, and the next instant the whale’s huge head shot out of the water just ahead of the boat, the jaws gnashing. The lower jaw seemed to be crumpled up at the tip. He just missed the boat completely, but got the whale line between his jaws, and chewed it, getting a tooth through it, as I found out later, and fraying the line badly. {128} He came up out of the water so far that his side fin showed, and the ends of Hall’s harpoons, and Mr. Brown seized that moment to lance him. He got in two thrusts with the lance, and when he withdrew it, its shank was bent almost at right angles. He did not stop to straighten it, but seized another, which, however, he had no chance to use.