My Father, however, as little trammelled in judgment by ordinary usages as he was in the habit of being guided by popular ideas of the limits of practicability, was much annoyed by the officer’s assumption, which had prevented his being called. “It was no use disturbing you,” the officer pleaded, “as there was not a boat in readiness for the fishery.” “But a boat might have been got ready,” was the confidently asserted rebuke. That this could have been done, however, within the short period of time in which a solitary whale might be expected to remain within sight, seemed to the officers as utterly impossible; for whilst a whale, under such circumstances, would seldom be found to remain within sight for half an hour, the preparing of the boats with lines, harpoons, and other requisites for the fishery, would, as they conceived, occupy several hours.
My Father maintained, however, the practicability of a boat being fitted out, in a manner sufficient for efficiency, in the course of a quarter of an hour; and, when the idea was unhesitatingly objected to as an _impossibility_, he undertook to prove his assertion. A boat then hanging at the larboard quarter, empty, except as to oars, he selected for an experiment, and undertook, with the help only of the watch upon deck,—about sixteen hands,—to have that boat ready for active service within the space of fifteen minutes.
To the due apprehending of this unprecedented undertaking, it will be proper to describe what is ordinarily deemed needful for fitting out a boat for the harpooning and capturing of the whale. The loose furniture of oars, harpoons, lances, etc., present no particular difficulty; but the supplying of an adequate quantity of lines, and placing them in a condition for being safely run out, is, as ordinarily practised, a long and tedious operation. The lines, it may be mentioned, are taken on board from their winter storehouse, in coils made up by the ropemaker, in the shape of a short drum, each coil weighing a little more than a hundred-weight, and measuring 120 fathoms in length. They are so coiled, in regular layers, commencing with that of the slender square or cylindrical centre on which they are wound, that they may be either unwound, by reversing the original motion of the coil from the exterior, or by taking up the inner end left loose in the open centre, the line may be drawn out thence whilst the coil remains at rest. For the lodgment of the lines, when deliberately preparing for the fishery, they are _unrolled_ from the cylindrical mass, and coiled in compartments in the boats as they come off; but as this could not be done under a period of some hours, the running of the lines out of the centre of the coils was the plan alone available for my Father’s object.