In preparation for the description of whaling, a discourse on the danger of a rope aboard a whale boat zinging out at such ferocious speed with a whale attached to the other end of it that it risks taking limbs of unwary whalers with it.
Melville describes its strength, its material, its manner of coiling and storage, and other details which make sitting in a whale boat rather like sitting inside a working steam engineI have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line
In case you think this detail is tedious, Ishmael explains his parablewere the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.
why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.
