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but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all,

and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself

in confounding attempts to explain the mystery.  Nay, to this

very hour, I often puzzle myself with it.



Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at

feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar,

in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking

up and seeing Queequeg's pagan arm thrown round me.

But at length all the past night's events soberly recurred,

one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to

the comical predicament.  For though I tried to move his arm--

unlock his bridegroom clasp--yet, sleeping as he was, he still

hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain.

I now strove to rouse him--"Queequeg!"--but his only answer

was a snore.  I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it

were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch.

Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping

by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby.

A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange

house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk!

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a disagreeable revulsion.  Nor did I at all object to the hint

from Queequeg that perhaps it were best to strike a light,

seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he felt a strong

desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk.  Be it said,

that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking

in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices

grow when love once comes to bend them.  For now I liked

nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed,

because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then.

I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord's policy of insurance.

I was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness

of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.

With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed

the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew

over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame

of the new-lit lamp.



Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage

away to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke

of his native island; and, eager to hear his history,

I begged him to go on and tell it.  He gladly complied.

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"He hain't been a sittin' so all day, has he?" said the landlady.



But all we said, not a word could we drag out of him;

I almost felt like pushing him over, so as to change his position,

for it was almost intolerable, it seemed so painfully and

unnaturally constrained; especially, as in all probability

he had been sitting so for upwards of eight or ten hours,

going too without his regular meals.



"Mrs. Hussey," said I, "he's alive at all events; so leave us,

if you please, and I will see to this strange affair myself."



Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail

upon Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain.  There he sat;

and all he could do--for all my polite arts and blandishments--

he would not move a peg, nor say a single word, nor even look

at me, nor notice my presence in any the slightest way.



I wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan;

do they fast on their hams that way in his native island.

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came aboard last night."



"What Captain?--Ahab?"



"Who but him indeed?"



I was going to ask him some further questions concerning Ahab,

when we heard a noise on deck.



"Holloa!  Starbuck's astir," said the rigger.  "He's a lively chief

mate that; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to."

And so saying he went on deck, and we followed.



It was now clear sunrise.  Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes;

the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged;

and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various last

things on board.  Meanwhile Captain Ahab remained invisibly enshrined

within his cabin.

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in getting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea.

Indeed, as that was not at all his proper business, but the pilot's;

and as he was not yet completely recovered--so they said--therefore,

Captain Ahab stayed below.  And all this seemed natural enough;

especially as in the merchant service many captains never show

themselves on deck for a considerable time after heaving up the anchor,

but remain over the cabin table, having a farewell merry-making with

their shore friends, before they quit the ship for good with the pilot.



But there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain Peleg

was now all alive.  He seemed to do most of the talking and commanding,

and not Bildad.



"Aft here, ye sons of bachelors," he cried, as the sailors lingered

at the main-mast. "Mr. Starbuck, drive aft."



"Strike the tent there!"--was the next order.  As I hinted before,

this whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port;

and on board the Pequod, for thirty years, the order to strike

the tent was well known to be the next thing to heaving

up the anchor.

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from their compacted aged robustness.  His whole high, broad form,

seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould,

like Cellini's cast Perseus.  Threading its way out from among

his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny

scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing,

you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish.

It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight,

lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly

darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and

grooves out the bark from top to bottom ere running off into

the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded.

Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar

left by some desperate wound, no one could certainly say.

By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little

or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates.

But once Tashtego's senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew,

superstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years

old did Ahab become that way branded, and then it came upon him,

not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife

at sea.  Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived,

by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man,

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But this insult is whittled down to a point only.'  But now comes

the greatest joke of the dream, Flask.  While I was battering away

at the pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old merman, with a hump

on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round.

'What are you 'bout?' says he.  Slid! man, but I was frightened.

Such a phiz!  But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright.

'What am I about?' says I at last.  'And what business is that of yours,

I should like to know, Mr. Humpback?  Do you want a kick?'

By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned

round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed

he had for a clout--what do you think, I saw?--why thunder alive,

man, his stern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out.

Says I on second thought, 'I guess I won't kick you, old fellow.'

'Wise Stubb,' said he, 'wise Stubb;' and kept muttering it all

the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney hag.

Seeing he wasn't going to stop saying over his 'wise Stubb,

wise Stubb,' I thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again.

But I had only just lifted my foot for it, when he roared out,

'Stop that kicking!'  'Halloa,' says I, 'what's the matter now,

old fellow?'  'Look ye here,' says he; 'let's argue the insult.

Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?'  'Yes, he did,' says I--'right here

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the prodigies related in old times of the inland Strello mountain

in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a lake in which

the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still

more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse

(whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy Land

by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost

fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.



Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these;

and knowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale

had escaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that

some whalemen should go still further in their superstitions;

declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal

(for immortality is but ubiquity in time); that though groves

of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still swim

away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to spout

thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception;

for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away,

his unsullied jet would once more be seen.



But even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough

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"Aye, aye, sir," cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his

great steering oar.  "Lay back!" addressing his crew.  "There!--there!--

there again!  There she blows right ahead, boys!--lay back!



"Never heed yonder yellow boys, Archy."



"Oh, I don't mind'em, sir," said Archy; "I knew it all before now.

Didn't I hear 'em in the hold?  And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it?

What say ye, Cabaco?  They are stowaways, Mr. Flask."



"Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children;

pull, my little ones," drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb

to his crew, some of whom still showed signs of uneasiness.

"Why don't you break your backbones, my boys?  What is it you stare at?

Those chaps in yonder boat?  Tut!  They are only five more hands

come to help us never mind from where the more the merrier.

Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone devils are good

fellows enough.  So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke

for a thousand pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes!

Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm oil, my heroes!

Three cheers, men--all hearts alive!  Easy, easy; don't be in a hurry--

don't be in a hurry.  Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals?

Bite something, you dogs!  So, so, so, then:--softly, softly!

That's it--that's it! long and strong.  Give way there, give way!

The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep.

Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull.  Pull, will ye? pull,

can't ye? pull, won't ye?  Why in the name of gudgeons and

ginger-cakes don't ye pull?--pull and break something! pull,

and start your eyes out!  Here," whipping out the sharp knife

from his girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw his knife,

and pull with the blade between his teeth.  That's it--that's it.

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O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad!  See! see that

white water!"  And so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head,

and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it

far off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging

in the boat's stern like a crazed colt from the prairie.



"Look at that chap now," philosophically drawled Stubb, who, with his

unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth,

at a short distance, followed after--"He's got fits, that Flask has.

Fits? yes, give him fits--that's the very word--pitch fits into 'em.

Merrily, merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;--

merry's the word.  Pull, babes--pull, sucklings--pull, all.

But what the devil are you hurrying about?  Softly, softly,

and steadily, my men.  Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing more.

Crack all your backbones, and bite your knives in two--that's all.

Take it easy--why don't ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your

livers and lungs!"



But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that

tiger-yellow crew of his--these were words best omitted here;

for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land.

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But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever,

and no tiller at all.  High times indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled

about the water on castors like gouty old aldermen in patent chairs.

And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits of any such effeminacy;

and therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew must leave the ship,

and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number,

that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain,

having no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing

like a pine tree.  And often you will notice that being conscious

of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him from

the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive

to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs.

Nor is this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense

projecting steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of

his back, the after-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front.

He is thus completely wedged before and behind, and can only

expand himself sideways by settling down on his stretched legs;

but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far to topple him,

because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding breadth.

Merely make a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up.

Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes,

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for now a respite was granted.  After the full interval of his

sounding had elapsed, the whale rose again, and being now in advance

of the smoker's boat, and much nearer to it than to any of the others,

Stubb counted upon the honor of the capture.  It was obvious,

now, that the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers.

All silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer of use.

Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play.

And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew

to the assault.



Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish.  All alive to his jeopardy,

he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting from the mad

yeast which he brewed.*





*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance

the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head consists.

Though apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant

part about him.  So that with ease he elevates it in the air,

and invariably does so when going at his utmost speed.

Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head,

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"Stand clear of the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting

of a rocket.



Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous

mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into

the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it,

to far down her glittering copper; and all caught their breath,

as half swinging--now over the sailors' heads, and now

over the water--Daggoo, through a thick mist of spray,

was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,

buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom

of the sea!  But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away,

when a naked figure with a boardingsword in his hand,

was for one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks.

The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had

dived to the rescue.  One packed rush was made to the side,

and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment,

and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen.

Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little

off from the ship.

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fifteen feet in the air.  He minds you somewhat of a juggler,

balancing a long staff on his chin.  Next moment with a rapid,

nameless impulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans

the foaming distance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale.

Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood.



"That drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb.  "'Tis July's

immortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine today!

Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable

old Monongahela!  Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin

to the jet, and we'd drink round it!  Yea, verily, hearts alive,

we'd brew choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there,

and from that live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff."



Again and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated,

the spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful leash.

The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is slackened,

and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely watches

the monster die.

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But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip,

suddenly spying whales close to them on one side, turned,

and gave chase; and Stubb's boat was now so far away,

and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip's

ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably.

By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;

but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot;

such, at least, they said he was.  The sea had jeeringly kept

his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.

Not drowned entirely, though.  Rather carried down alive

to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped

primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;

and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps;

and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities,

Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects,

that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs.

He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it;

and therefore his shipmates called him mad.  So man's insanity

is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason,

man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason,

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and half joes, and quarter joes.  What then should there be

in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful?

By Golconda! let me read it once.  Halloa! here's signs and

wonders truly!  That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome

calls the zodiac, and what my almanack below calls ditto.

I'll get the almanack; and as I have heard devils can be raised

with Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try my hand at raising a meaning

out of these queer curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar.

Here's the book.  Let's see now.  Signs and wonders;

and the sun, he's always among 'em.  Hem, hem, hem; here they are--

here they go--all alive:  Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull

and Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins.  Well; the sun

he wheels among 'em.  Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing

the threshold between two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring.

Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places.

You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come

in to supply the thoughts.  That's my small experience,

so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch's navigator,

and Daboll's arithmetic go.  Signs and wonders, eh?  Pity if there

is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders!

There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark!  By Jove, I have it!

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or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we

are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio,

or the Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound,

when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer,

is amusing himself.  As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside!

here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt,

he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius,

or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us;

and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.

There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through

it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty.

Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so,

alow here, does jolly Stubb.  Oh, jolly's the word for aye!

Adieu, Doubloon!  But stop; here comes little King-Post;

dodge round the try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll have

to say.  There; he's before it; he'll out with something presently.

So, so; he's beginning."



"I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises

a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him.  So, what's all

this staring been about?  It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true;

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the noblest and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life--I resolved

to capture him, spite of the boiling rage he seemed to be in.

And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or the tooth

it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat's

crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say,

I jumped into my first mate's boat--Mr. Mounttop's here

(by the way, Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain);--

as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see,

was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the

first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it.  But, Lord,

look you, sir--hearts and souls alive, man--the next instant,

in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both eyes out--all befogged

and bedeadened with black foam--the whale's tail looming straight

up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple.

No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday,

with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say,

after the second iron, to toss it overboard--down comes the tail

like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half

in splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed through

the wreck, as though it was all chips.  We all struck out.

To escape his terrible flailings, I seized hold of my harpoon-pole

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sat up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet-"



"Oh, very severe!" chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly

altering his voice, "Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night,

till he couldn't see to put on the bandages; and sending me

to bed, half seas over, about three o'clock in the morning.

Oh, ye stars! he sat up with me indeed, and was very severe

in my diet.  Oh! a great watcher, and very dietetically severe,

is Dr. Bunger.  (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why don't ye?

You know you're a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy,

I'd rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man."



"My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir"--

said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing

to Ahab--"is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many

clever things of that sort.  But I may as well say--en passant,

as the French remark--that I myself--that is to say, Jack Bunger,

late of the reverend clergy--am a strict total abstinence man;

I never drink-"



"Water!" cried the captain; "he never drinks it; it's a sort

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to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large as all Asia,

both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles

of the sea combined.



Moreover:  we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity

of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,

therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult

generations must be contemporary.  And what this is, we may soon

gain some idea of, by imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries,

and family vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all

the men, women, and children who were alive seventy-five years ago;

and adding this countless host to the present human population

of the globe.



Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal

in his species, however perishable in his individuality.

He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once

swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle,

and the Kremlin.  In Noah's flood he despised Noah's Ark;

and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands,

to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive,

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perilous seas, gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning

of the error-abounding log? and in this very Typhoon, did he not

swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But shall this crazed

old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down

to doom with him?--Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer

of thirty men and more, if this ship come to any deadly harm;

and come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship will,

if Ahab have his way.  If, then, he were this instant--

put aside, that crime would not be his.  Ha! is he muttering

in his sleep?  Yes, just there,--in there, he's sleeping.

Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake again.

I can't withstand thee, then, old man.  Not reasoning;

not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to;

all this thou scornest.  Flat obedience to thy own flat commands,

this is all thou breathest.  Aye, and say'st the men have vow'd

thy vow; say'st all of us are Ahabs.  Great God forbid!--

But is there no other way? no lawful way?--Make him a prisoner

to be taken home?  What! hope to wrest this old man's living

power from his own living hands?  Only a fool would try it.

Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes

and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor;

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in sewing together.



"Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch,

Ahab held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this

hand I hold his death!  Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning

are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place

behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"



"Then God keep thee, old man--see'st thou that"--

pointing to the hammock--"I bury but one of five stout men,

who were alive only yesterday; but were dead ere night.

Only that one I bury; the rest were buried before they died;

you sail upon their tomb."  Then turning to his crew--"Are

ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and lift

the body; so, then--Oh!  God"--advancing towards the hammock

with uplifted hands--"may the resurrection and the life-"



"Brace forward!  Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men.



But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape

the sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea;

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a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any

sympathy from the green country without--oh, weariness! heaviness!

Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!--when I think of all this;

only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before--

and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare--

fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul!--when the poorest

landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken

the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts--away, whole oceans away,

from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for

Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow--

wife? wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive?  Aye, I widowed

that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then,

the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow,

with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously,

foamingly chased his prey--more a demon than a man!--aye, aye! what

a forty years' fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been!

Why this strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm

at the oar, and the iron, and the lance? how the richer

or better is Ahab now?  Behold.  Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard,

that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been

snatched from under me?  Here, brush this old hair aside;

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but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads

to gain the uttermost stern.



And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out,

as the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way;

and from his body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be

darted at from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him,

as it were; and while the other boats involuntarily paused,

as before a quick crisis impossible to withstand, then it was that

monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe,

which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated;

frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his

naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe.

As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him;

the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped,

as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft,

bit the craft completely in twain, and locked themselves fast

again in the sea, midway between the two floating wrecks.

These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at

the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold

fast to the oars to lash them across.

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became jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea,

at almost every dip.



"Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars.

Pull on! 'tis the better rest, the sharks' jaw than the yielding water."



"But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"



"They will last long enough! pull on!--But who can tell"--

he muttered--"whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale

or on Ahab?--But pull on!  Aye, all alive, now--we near him.

The helm! take the helm! let me pass,"--and so saying two of the

oarsmen helped him forward to the bows of the still flying boat.



At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging

along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely

oblivious of its advance--as the whale sometimes will--and Ahab

was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off

from the whale's spout, curled round his great Monadnock hump;

he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back,

and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted