Rich Man's Coffin by K Martin Gardner Page B

and copied their movements.   Sam braced his back foot, and said,   “All right, Jack.” His strain from holding the harpoon overhead for so long was beginning to show in his quivering arms.   He asked Black Jack, “Do you see where the line comes over the loggerhead and into the boat at your feet?”
              “Yes.”
              “Good.   That is where you will see smoke.   You are to pour water on the line, and keep pouring no matter what, or the line will part and we will lose the whale, understood?”
              Black Jack nodded.
              “Excellent.”   Hissed Sam, like an excited snake. Without hesitation, he turned his head toward the wet, gray mound in the water and launched his harpoon, thrusting all of his worldly strength into a spot just behind the blowhole.
              To Black Jack, it all seemed to happen in slow motion:   The blade glinted as it met the shiny, black skin, with the hooked razor disappearing beneath the slick flesh making a sickening slicing sound.   Within a split second, thick, purple blood began to weep from the wound, forming a large dome-shaped droplet around the shaft of the harpoon.   Black Jack watched in terror as if the cut were his own.   He envisioned the pain of past childhood scars:   How the horrible sensation hesitated before flooding the mind with fiery alarm.   It must have been the same for the whale.
              When Black Jack’s head returned upright from bouncing off his back, the smell of smoke and the burning in his neck gave him an immediate bearing on reality which helped to quell his urge to vomit his heart out through his nose.   He vaguely made out the line and the loggerhead, but nothing else within the tunnel of water would consent to focus as it rushed by.   Black Jack, scarcely able to hold onto the rails, could not pick up a pale to dowse the hot, smoking rope.   Luckily, he was relieved from his duty of bucket brigadier by the wave that broke in from behind him as the whale suddenly stopped and the boat continued.   The skiff, filling with water, crashed into the back of the whale with great force, and the impact sent everyone who had lost their grip on the rail reeling forward in the boat.   Black Jack found himself sitting among a pile of his comrades, drenched in blood and salt water. All of them looked and felt as though they had fallen together as a mob from a great height.
              Sam stood up and shouted,   “Ready, ready, Lads!   Hold fast!”    He sprung from his seat at the bow and surveyed the whale,   waiting for its next move.   The blood from the wound was oozing out. No spray emanated from the whale’s spout.   It floated motionless in the water as its ends began to sag lower in the waves.   Sam yelled out, “Yes, boys!   This looks like it will be an easy one.   Hurrah!”   The boat broke into cheers from men who had hardly had the strength to breathe not seconds before; and much waving of arms and slapping of backs took place.   As they all looked around, the men saw the second whale, roughly a mile in the offing, slap its fluke menacingly at a skiff full of struggling men.   Sam looked back into his boat, and said, “They’ll be right, mates.   That one is just about to meet this one in whale hell!”   The men laughed and cheered wildly again, over the prospect of two whales being brought back to the beach together.   Black Jack stared, wild-eyed at the entire scene, taking it all in.   His head buzzed and his blood coursed. He felt as if his very soul was on fire.
              “Black Jack, you all right?”   Sam shouted to him over the cheering mob.
              “Oh yes, oh yes!”   He shouted, his face sweaty and tingling as he smiled.
              “Good!”   Sam said.   “Everyone ready for the tow home?”   He asked.   The men yelled wildly.   “Right then!   We’ll wait ‘til