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- Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous
whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final
perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just
beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian’s
head was almost on a level with Ahab’s heel. From this height the whale
was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing
his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into
the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they
had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
“And did none of ye see it before?” cried Ahab, hailing the perched men
all around him.
“I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did, and I
cried out,” said Tashtego.
“Not the same instant; not the same—no, the doubloon is mine, Fate
reserved the doubloon for me. _I_ only; none of ye could have raised
the White Whale first. There she blows!—there she blows!—there she
blows! There again!—there again!” he cried, in long-drawn, lingering,
methodic tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale’s
visible jets. “He’s going to sound! In stunsails! Down
top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay
on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So;
steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water! All
ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck;
lower, lower,—quick, quicker!” and he slid through the air to the deck.
“He is heading straight to leeward, sir,” cried Stubb, “right away from
us; cannot have seen the ship yet.”
“Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!—brace up!
Shiver her!—shiver her!—So; well that! Boats, boats!”
Soon all the boats but Starbuck’s were dropped; all the boat-sails
set—all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to
leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up
Fedallah’s sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.
Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea;
but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew
still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a
noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter
came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling
hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated
thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy,
greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly
projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged
waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky
forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and
behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving
valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and
danced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of
hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their
fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted hull
of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected
from the white whale’s back; and at intervals one of the cloud of
soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over
- title
- Chapter 132