Moby Dick

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the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme
pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a
common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs
in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat
again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled
upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a
little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp--the rope
which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that
connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious
to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,
twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the
oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid
eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest
snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal
woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies,