Moby Dick

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The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first
sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment
its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and
twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal
to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something
over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally
coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so
as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or
layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart,"
or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least
tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take
somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used
in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an
entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then
reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act
of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists.