The game avoided us. Pull as silently as we would, the great leviathans would still glide away at the very moment we seemed about to close with them.
In one of the ice-formed lagoons, round as the "round table" of the famous knights, and perhaps a mile in diameter, there were at least a dozen of the animals, "blowing," "breaching," and "turning flukes." This place we finally entered for a dash at the school.
But it was like entering a corral of bison, where heels and tails are all in the air at once. One of our boats was stove forthwith, and one of Captain Burdick's. The jovial commander himself got fast, but was obliged to cut from his whale to avoid being taken under the ice.
My own place was with our third mate, a young, athletic man, who, although an excellent whaleman, had of late, through no fault of his own, been so unfortunate that Captain Wayne, in an unreasoning fit of temper, had threatened to "break" him, and send him before the mast. But he had the sympathy and respect of his boat's crew, who knew the circumstances.
We all hoped, on Mr. Brewer's account even more than our own, that our boat would this day get a whale.
Bob Rivers, a brawny, powerful fellow, was our boat-steerer. But the boat-steerer has nothing to do with steering until he has struck the whale, when he exchanges places with his superior, and goes from the bow to the stern.
In spite of our hopes, however, it seemed as if we must at last return to the ship without a single laurel from this stirring field. We had only the poor consolation of beholding others as little fortunate as ourselves.
But the moment of triumph was at hand, when all our disappointments were to be well repaid.
We were at the farther side of the lagoon, all the other boats being dispersed here and there, and a whale, which Bob Rivers had thought to strike, was just moving out of our reach, when suddenly, a little off our starboard bow, there rushed to the surface, and shot high above it, a monster much larger than any of the others.
With a loud noise, his great frame fell upon the water, which rolled away from his sides in long wide swells. And then, catching sight of us, he started swiftly off, crossing the head of our boat at a distance which would have seemed hopeless to an ordinary harpooner; yet I felt the quick motion of Bob Rivers as he gathered himself, for the dart.