- end_line
- 20933
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-18T02:42:21.461Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 20867
- text
- the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail
feathers streaming like pennons.
A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested
the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with
ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering
eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness,
rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that
great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so
divinely swam.
On each soft side—coincident with the parted swell, that but once
leaving him, then flowed so wide away—on each bright side, the whale
shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters who
namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured
to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of
tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all
who for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way
thou may’st have bejuggled and destroyed before.
And thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among
waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby
Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his
submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw.
But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an
instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia’s
Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air,
the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight.
Hoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls
longingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.
With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift,
the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick’s reappearance.
“An hour,” said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat’s stern; and he gazed
beyond the whale’s place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing
vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed
whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze
now freshened; the sea began to swell.
“The birds!—the birds!” cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now
all flying towards Ahab’s boat; and when within a few yards began
fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous,
expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s; Ahab could
discover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down
into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a
white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it
rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long
crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the
undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw;
his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea.
The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble
tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled
the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon
Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and
seizing Perth’s harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and
stand by to stern.
Now, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis,
its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while yet
under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that
malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted
himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head
lengthwise beneath the boat.
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