where
his dreaded monarch lay. This change of course gave rise to a new source
of apprehension. If the smaller bull should continue to encircle the
larger, there was great reason to believe that the line of Daggett might
get entangled with the boat of Gardiner, and produce a collision that
might prove fatal to all there. In order to be ready to meet this danger,
Roswell ordered his crew to be on the look-out, and to have their knives
in a state for immediate use. It was not known what might have been the
consequence of this circular movement as respects the two boats; for,
before they could come together, Daggett's line actually passed into the
mouth of Gardiner's whale, and drawing up tight into the angle of his
jaws, set the monster in motion with a momentum and power that caused the
iron to draw from the smaller whale, which by this time had more than half
encircled the animal. So rapid was the rate of running now, that Roswell
was obliged to let out line, his whale sounding to a prodigious depth.
Daggett did the same unwilling to cut as long as he could hold on to his
line.

At the expiration of five minutes the large bull came up again for breath,
with both lines still fast to him; the one in the regular way, or attached
to the harpoon, and the other jammed in the jaws of the animal by means of
the harpoon and staff, which formed a sort of toggle at the angle of his
enormous mouth. In consequence of feeling this unusual tenant, the fish
compressed its jaws together, thus rendering the fastening so much the
more secure. As both boats had let run line freely while the whale was
sounding, they now found themselves near a quarter of a mile astern of
him, towing along, side by side, and not fifty feet asunder. If the spirit
of rivalry had been aroused among the crew of these two boats before, it
was now excited to a degree that menaced acts of hostility.

"You know, of course, Captain Daggett, that this is my whale," said
Gardiner. "I was fast to him regularly, and was only waiting for him to
become a little quiet to lance him, when your whale crossed his course,
fouled your line, and has got you fast in an unaccountable way, but not
according to whaling law."

"I don't know that. I fastened to a whale, Captain Gar'ner, and am fast
to a whale now. It must be _proved_ that I have no right to the crittur'
before I give him up."

Gardiner understood the sort of man with whom he had to deal too well to
waste words in id