Just as he disappeared the flukes descended on the spot which he had left, and cut the bow of the boat completely away, sending the stern high into the air with a violence that tossed men, and oars, and shattered planks, and cordage, flying over the monster's back into the seething caldron of foam around it.

It was apparently a scene of the most complete and instantaneous destruction, yet, strange to say, not a man was lost.

A few seconds after, the white foam of the sea was dotted with black heads as the men rose one by one to the surface, and struck out for floating oars and pieces of the wrecked boat.
"They're lost!" cried Fred Ellice in a voice of horror.
"Not a bit of it, youngster; they're safe enough, I'll warrant," replied the captain, as his own boat flew past the spot, towed by the whale.--"Pay out, Amos Parr; give him line, or he'll tear the bows out of us." "Ay, ay, sir," sang out Amos, as he sat coolly pouring water on the loggerhead round which a coil of the rope was whizzing like lightning; "all right.

The mate's men are all safe, sir; I counted them as we shot past, and I seed Buzzby come up last of all, blowin' like a grampus; and small wonder, considerin' the dive he took." "Take another turn of the coil, Amos, and hold on," said the captain.
The harpooner obeyed, and away they went after the whale like a rocket, with a tremendous strain on the line and a bank of white foam gurgling up to the edge of the gunwale, that every moment threatened to fill the boat and sink her.

Such a catastrophe is of not unfrequent occurrence, when whalemen thus towed by a whale are tempted to hold on too long; and many instances have happened of boats and their crews being in this way dragged under water and lost.