Constitutional Whig

MISCELLANEOUS DEPARTMENT.

From the Nantucket Inquirer.

THE DROWNED HARPOONER.

Many and strange are the accidents and adventures that attend those amphibious beings who traverse the outstretched world of waters in quest of Ocean's tumultuous monarch. But the most perilous incidents are encountered by those daring mariners, who are engaged in the capture of that species of whale ycleped spermaceti—pursuing the greasy monster throughout all his favorite haunts and distant retreats in the broad and fathomless Pacific. In general the unwieldy leviathan exhibits no symptoms of a choleric temperament; and appears altogether unconscious of the systematic warfare so zealously waged upon his tribe, by the insignificant occupants of the superincumbent element. He knows nothing of their long and laborious crusades in machines moved by wind—he dreams not of their egg-shell ships, in which, bent on death, and armed with the piercing javelin, fastened to endless cords, they pull themselves into his immediate presence—nor does he often heed the slight skiff, as it slides towards him like a six legged gnat along the ceiling, bearing in its prow the athletic boatsteerer, whose brawny hands uphold and aim the glittering dart. Yet, when the barbed lance stings him in the shoulder, or the horn of his enemy, the sword-fish perforates his rotund and oleaginous sides, no exasperated demon could evince stronger indications of wrath, rage and madness. At first he plunges incontinent into the deep abyss—then wheeling upwards, he urges his immense body at full length into the air, lashing with his ample fluke the foaming wave, and rending to atoms every substance within his reach.

In the month of December, the summer of the southern hemisphere, a Nantucket ship was cruising for whales on the coast of Chili. Nothing could exceed the placid smoothness of the seas, or the pellucid azure of the over-hanging firmament. There was just enough of motion in the atmosphere to propel the vessel in her course, and to invigorate her crew with the spirit of enterprise. Every sail was set, and every bosom swelled with the hope of a speedy accomplishment of the object of their expedition. The continent and all the usual abodes of mortals, were far, far away. Home, and its sweet endearments, were remembered as a by-gone vision; and considered in the future, as saints think of heaven. The occasional scream of an albatross, wheeling in the blue expanse—the monotonous dash of the ship's stern through the scarcely resisting waters—intermingled with the varied tones of a few human voices conversing familiarly on deck, were the only sounds which distinguished that region from the primeval realm of

"Silence coeval with eternity."

Suddenly, a hollow, hissing ebullition, like the blast of a brazier's furnace, or the sigh of a dying volcano, broke upon the ready ears of the seamen. A cry from the mast head announced the appearance of their prey: and at the same instant the crew found themselves surrounded on all sides by an extensive shoal of whales, foundering, and spouting, and blowing, like so many English trumpeters at the battle of Waterloo. Forthwith, three boats were lowered, manned, and supplied with the usual paraphernalia, harpoons, lances, tow-lines, waists, oars and paddle; with a sail, a bag of bread and a keg of water to each. They had but a short distance to row, ere they came in contact with their mighty enemy. The boats were severally commanded by the shipmaster and two of his mates, assisted by their respective boatsteerers, to whom the duty of striking the whale is ordinarily assigned. The larboard waist boat, under the second mate's direction contained in its bow an active young man, who had obtained the esteem of all his shipmates, and whom we shall introduce to our readers under the name of Jonah Coffin. Poising his harpoon, he firmly awaited the orders of his superior, then seated in the boat's stern. Before him, forging reluctantly forward, was a huge and uncouth mass, alternately emitting from its glossy protuberances the sparkling effulgence of a meridian sun, or partially descending below the temporary surge, forming little vortices to the water and puffing from its nostrils the convolving brine. Long and patiently did the oarsmen ply at their stations—"all away," said the officer encouragingly—while he drew towards him the handle of his steering oar. The very eve of the monster was now sought to dart," so thought the mate, and Jonah, with the heft of a Polyphemus, drove the fatal weapon fast into the body of his gigantic antagonist.

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