- end_line
- 21783
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-23T15:41:06.423Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 21717
- text
- far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the
present her headway had been stopped. He seemed swimming with his
utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight
path in the sea.
“Oh! Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third
day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that
madly seekest him!”
Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled
to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was sliding
by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck’s face as he
leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and
follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards,
he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three
mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats
which had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in
repairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he
sped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying
themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all
this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers
seemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking
that the vane or flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to
Tashtego, who had just gained that perch, to descend again for another
flag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.
Whether fagged by the three days’ running chase, and the resistance to
his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some
latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White
Whale’s way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly
nearing him once more; though indeed the whale’s last start had not
been so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves
the unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to
the boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades
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 shark’s 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 his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the
hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked
into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his
nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so
suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated
part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have
been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen—who foreknew
not the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for
its effects—these were flung out; but so fell, that, in an instant two
of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a
combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man
helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.
- title
- Chunk 4