"Hold fast to it, my son," yelled the captain. "Keep every inch you get, and get every inch you can. We'll have a sleigh-ride now, and such a one as landsmen know nothing about."
For a moment the strain was fearful, and Frank's power of muscle was tested to the utmost. It seemed to him that if the harpoon did not draw or the line break, his arms would be pulled off. Letting go was something he did not think of; but he knew he could not retain his hold much longer, so in spite of the old mate's warning gestures, he passed a bight of the line around a thwart and held it there. By this time the boat began to move, and the strain was somewhat lessened.
Now began a novel ride, which Frank thought he could have enjoyed if he had only had leisure to give his attention to it. A whale can move at tremendous speed for a short distance, and this one went at such a rate that the boat buried her bow in the waves, and rolled back great masses of foam, which, spreading out over the surface of the water, gave it the appearance of a bank of snow. Perhaps it was this that first caused the sailors to call a ride of this kind a sleigh-ride. But Frank had no time to see what was going on around him. He had work to perform; and it was work to haul a heavy boat containing six men through the waves against such resistance as the whale created by the high rate of speed he kept up. The line was wet and slippery, and Frank's hands, which he had fondly hoped were pretty well hardened by this time, soon began to feel the effects of it.
In the first lesson he received while manœuvring about the "dummy whale," Frank had been instructed how to adjust the line to make the boat move side by side with a running whale and at a short distance from it, and he struggled hard to bring the boat in that position; but the line came in very slowly, and sometimes when he was almost on the point of accomplishing his object, an unusually large wave striking the bow or a sudden spurt on the part of the frantic beast in front, would tear the line from his hands in spite of all he could do to prevent it.
At length, after Frank had worked his best for nearly an hour without once pausing for breath, and the line had been drawn through his hands for the third time, the captain's small stock of patience was all exhausted, and he began to relieve his mind by uttering heavy oaths. "Coward!" he yelled, stamping his feet as if he were trying to knock a hole through the bottom of the boat. "If you are afraid to put me alongside that whale, jump overboard and give place to a better man. You're fixing your back for a rope's end as soon as you get aboard the ship!"
Frank and the old boatswain's mate exchanged quick glances, one elevating his eye-brows, and the other drawing his down. The first meant: "If he tries it will you sing out?" and Frank by his answering scowl meant: "I will." Not a word was passed, but each understood the other perfectly.
[CHAPTER XI.]
CUTTING IN AND TRYING OUT.