"
"Delightful!" cried Miss Fountain; "the waves bounded beneath you like
a steed that knows its rider. Pray continue."
"Yes, Miss Fountain. Now of course you can see that, if the line ran
out too easy, the whale would leave us astern altogether, and if it
jammed or ran too hard, she would tow us under water."
"Of course we see," said Eve, ironically; "we understand everything by
instinct. Hang explanations when I'm excited; go ahead, do!"
"Then I won't explain how it is or why it is, but I'll just let you
know that two or three hundred fathom of line are passed round the
boat from stem to stern and back, and carried in and out between the
oarsmen as they sit. Well, it was all new to me then; but when the
boat began jumping and rocking, and the line began whizzing in and
out, and screaming and smoking like--there now, fancy a machine, a
complicated one, made of poisonous serpents, the steam on, and you
sitting in the middle of the works, with not an inch to spare, on the
crankest, rockingest, jumpingest, bumpingest, rollingest cradle that
ever--"
"David!" said Eve, solemnly.
"Hallo!" sang out David.
"Don't!"
"Oh, yes, do!" cried Lucy, slightly clasping her hands.
"If this little black ugly line was to catch you, it would spin you
out of the boat like a shuttlecock; if it held you, it would cut you
in two, or hang you to death, or drown you all at one time; and if it
got jammed against anything alive or dead that could stand the strain,
it would take the boat and crew down to the coral before you could
wink twice.
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