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Harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron hook dangling from one of the stays of the mainmast, while Dan pulled down another that ran from something he called a "topping-lift," as Manuel drew alongside in his loaded dory. The Portuguese smiled a brilliant smile that Harvey learned to know well later, and with a short-handled fork began to throw fish into the pen on deck.

Will shoveled the loosened ice out, then seized the axe and worked for a short time with the same spirit that animated the Doctor. And so by turns they kept the axe and shovel flying, making very rapid progress. They soon were too deep to use long-handled tools, and resorted to mallet and chisel, and a short-handled hand axe. Slowly and more slowly progressed the work as the shaft grew deeper.

Once a low-hung two-wheeled vehicle rattled by, on which, insufficiently covered by sacking, lay a dead horse, the great head swinging ghastly over the slanting tail- board, the legs sticking out stark in front. A man, perched sideways on the carcass, swore at the rickety crock he was driving, and lashed it under the belly with a short-handled heavy-thonged whip.

It is done by darting a short-handled cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again. But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the intervening distance obscured from us.

Before he could reach them, however, two bare-footed men stepped softly out behind him from the galley; and whilst one seized and pinioned his arms behind him, the other flourished a large-headed, short-handled hammer over his head whilst he whispered fiercely in the ear of the paralysed skipper: "Give but a single outcry, and I'll spatter your brains about the deck."