Surged past, and turned to charge again.... This time, as it passed, Noll touched the creature with his lance, but the prick of it was no more than the dart in the neck of a fighting bull. It goaded the whale, and nothing more. He charged with fury; his very fury was their safety.
Noll struck the whale at a little after nine o'clock in the morning. At noon, the vast beast was still fighting, with no sign of weariness. It charged back and forth, back and forth; and the men swung the boat out of his way; and their muscles strained, their teeth ground together, the sweat poured from them with their efforts. They were intoxicated with the battle. Noll, in the bow, bellowed and shouted his defiance; the men yelled at every stroke; they shook their fists at the whale as he raged past them. And Silva, astern, snatching them again and again from the jaws of destruction, grinned between tight lips, and plied his oar, and cried to Noll to strike.
At a little after noon, the whale swung past Noll with such momentum that he was carried out to the rim of the circle in which the fight was staged, and saw Tichel's boat there. Any boat was fair game to the monster; and Tichel had grown careless with watching the breath-taking struggle. He had forgotten his own peril; he expected the whale to turn back on Noll again....
It did not; it swung for him, and its jaws sheared through the very waist of his boat, so that the two halves fell away on either side of the vast head. The men had time to jump clear; there was no man hurt--save for the strangling of the salt water--and the whale seemed to feel himself the victor, for he lay still as though to rest upon his laurels.
Willis Cox was nearest; he drove his boat that way, and stood in the bow, with lance in hand to strike. But Noll, hauling up desperately on the line, bellowed to him: "Let be, Willis. He's mine." And Willis sheered off.
Then the whale felt the tug of the line, and whirled once more to the battle. Willis picked up Tichel and his men, towed the halves of the boat away, back to the ship.... The _Sally_ was standing by, a mile from the battle. Such whales as this could sink the _Sally_ herself with a battering blow in the flank. It was dangerous to come too near. Willis put Tichel and his men aboard, and went back to wait and be ready to answer any command from Noll.