That was not the end of misfortune. The frayed end of line from Mr. Brown’s boat was not completely hauled in, and there were some fathoms still hanging down from the bow. The whale caught this frayed end between his jaws as he passed, and worried it as a terrier does a string. The effect was the same as if it had still been fast to the iron in his body. The line tautened instantly, and whirled the bow around, and then, as no attention was being given to the loggerhead end of a frayed line with a few fathoms over the bow, it began to snake out of its tub. I do not know how it happened—nobody knew—but Wright somehow got a kink in the line around his leg, and was snaked the length of the boat, kicking three men in the head on his meteoric course and out at the bow. Mr. Brown and Wright had been in the habit of doing without the kicking-strap. I have explained the kicking-strap. It is a piece of heavy line which extends loosely along the top of the clumsy cleat, and has its ends knotted under. {131} The whale line passes under it on its way to the groove in the stem. There was nothing, therefore, to stop Wright except the frail peg in the stem, and breaking the peg was nothing to him. He disappeared overboard. Everybody in the boat had given him up when, suddenly, the line went slack, and Wright shot to the surface. He had somehow managed to whip out his knife and cut the line. They got him aboard the boat at once. It was very nearly the end of poor Wright. He was in great pain and almost done, his hip dislocated, although no bones were broken. That was about the end of the whale. He went on for a little way, enveloped by the twisting lines. Then he stopped, shivered once more, and went into his flurry, spouting thick, black blood. That flurry, as I think of it now, could not have been pleasant to see, but I do not remember that it aroused any disgust in me at the time. It was not far from the ship, and I can only recollect a consuming curiosity, on my part, to see him die, and how he did it. It could not have differed very much, except in the size of the beast, from the scenes at John Green’s slaughter-house.