This was enough. If any one has had the misfortune to be in a coach drawn by four horses, when a sudden fright starts them off at speed, he can form a pretty accurate notion of the movement that now took place on board of Deacon Pratt's craft. Every one seemed to spring into activity, as if a single will directed a common set of muscles. Those who were below literally "tumbled up," as seamen express it, and those who were aloft slid down to the deck like flashes of lightning. Captain Gardiner sprang out of his cabin, seemingly at a single bound; at another, he was in the whale-boat that Hazard was in the very act of lowering into the water, as the schooner rounded-to. Perceiving himself anticipated here, the mate turned to the boat on the other quarter, and was in her, and in the water, almost as soon as his commanding officer. Although neither of the schooners was thoroughly fitted for a whaler, each had lines, lances, harpoons, &c., in readiness in their quarter-boats, prepared for any turn of luck like this which now offered. The process of paddling up to whales, which is now so common in the American ships, was then very little or not at all resorted to. It is said that the animals have got to be so shy, in consequence of being so much pursued, that the old mode of approaching them will not suffice, and that it now requires much more care and far more art to take one of these creatures, than it did thirty years since. On this part of the subject, we merely repeat what we hear, though we think we can see an advantage in the use of the paddle that is altogether independent of that of the greater quiet of that mode of forcing a boat ahead. He that paddles looks _ahead_, and the approach is more easily regulated, when the whole of the boat's crew are apprised, by means of their own senses, of the actual state of things, than when they attain their ideas of them through the orders of an officer. The last must govern in all cases, but the men are prepared for them, when they can see what is going on, and will be more likely to act with promptitude and intelligence, and will be less liable to make mistakes.