Eighteen hundred feet of line ran from each harpoon through a V-shaped groove in the bow to a box where the rope had been coiled with exquisite care. From there the line ran down the length of the boat to the stern, where it was given a turn or two around a short post called a loggerhead, then was run forward to a tub.

The mate swung the tiller and pointed the bow at the whale’s left side, placing the right-handed harpooner in position to make the throw. When the whale was about twenty feet away from the boat, the mate yelled an order at the harpooner.

“Give it to him!”

Bracing his knee against the inside of the boat, the harpooner pitched the spear like a javelin and the barb sunk into the whale’s side several inches behind its eye. Then he snatched up the second harpoon and planted it a foot behind the first.

“Stern away!” the mate shouted.

The oars dug into the water, and the boat shot back several yards.

The whale huffed steam through its blowhole, raised its great flukes high in the air, and brought them down with a thunderous clap, slapping the water where the boat had been seconds before. The whale lifted its tail in the air a second time, buried its head in the sea, and dove. A diving sperm whale can descend to a thousand feet at a speed of twenty-five knots. The line flew out of its tub in a blur. The tubman splashed seawater on the rope to cool it down, but the harpoon line smoked from friction as it rounded the loggerhead despite his best efforts.

The boat skimmed over the wave tops in a mad dash that whalers called a Nantucket sleigh ride. A cheer burst from the oarsmen, but they tensed when the boat stopped moving; the whale was on its way back up. Then the huge mammal surfaced in a tremendous explosion of foam and thrashed around like a trout caught on a lure, only to plunge once more to the depths, surfacing again after twenty minutes. The routine was repeated over and over. With each cycle, more line was hauled in and the distance shortened, until only a hundred feet or so separated the whale and boat.

The whale’s great blunt head swung around toward its tormenter. The mate saw the aggressive behavior and knew it was the prelude to an attack. He yelled at the harpooner to move aft.

The two men exchanged places in the rocking boat, tripping over oars, oarsmen, and lines in a scramble that would have been comical if not for the potentially fatal consequences.