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- CHAPTER 61. Stubb Kills a Whale.
If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to
Queequeg it was quite a different object.
“When you see him ’quid,” said the savage, honing his harpoon in the
bow of his hoisted boat, “then you quick see him ’parm whale.”
The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special
to engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell of
sleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean
through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively
ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins,
flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than
those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.
It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders
leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed
in what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in
that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of
my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will,
long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the
seamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that
at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every
swing that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering
helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the
wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my
hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved
me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not
forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like
the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian
hue, glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating
in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his
vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of
a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck
by some enchanter’s wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all
at once started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from
all parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from
aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and
regularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air.
“Clear away the boats! Luff!” cried Ahab. And obeying his own order, he
dashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.
The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and
ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the
leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples
as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed,
Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak
but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the
boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of
the noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase,
the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air,
and then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up.
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