- end_line
- 21021
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-23T15:41:06.417Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 20956
- text
- 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.
At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first
to perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a
movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had
made one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only
slipping further into the whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways as
it slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him
out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the
sea.
Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little
distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the
billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body;
so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty or more feet
out of the water—the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves,
dazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray
still higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel
billows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to
overleap its summit with their scud.
*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its
designation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary
up-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called
pitchpoling, previously described. By this motion the whale must best
and most comprehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him.
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly round
and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful
wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly
assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the
blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus’s elephants in the
book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the
whale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he
could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that;
helpless Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least
chance shock might burst. From the boat’s fragmentary stern, Fedallah
incuriously and mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other
drifting end, could not succor him; more than enough was it for them to
look to themselves. For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s
aspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made,
that he seemed horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other
boats, unharmed, still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into
the eddy to strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant
destruction of the jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that
case could they themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then,
they remained on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had
now become the old man’s head.
Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship’s
mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene;
and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!—“Sail on
the”—but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and
whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing
to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,—“Sail on the whale!—Drive him
off!”
The Pequod’s prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle,
she effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly
swam off, the boats flew to the rescue.
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