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- 12505
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:49:30.771Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 12440
- text
- Mayhew, who stood in the boat’s stern; “come on board.”
But now Gabriel started to his feet.
“Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible
plague!”
“Gabriel! Gabriel!” cried Captain Mayhew; “thou must either—” But that
instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings
drowned all speech.
“Hast thou seen the White Whale?” demanded Ahab, when the boat drifted
back.
“Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the
horrible tail!”
“I tell thee again, Gabriel, that—” But again the boat tore ahead as if
dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a
succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional
caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the
hoisted sperm whale’s head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was
seen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel
nature seemed to warrant.
When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story
concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from
Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed
leagued with him.
It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking
a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of
Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this
intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the
White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering
insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the
Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some
year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the
mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him;
and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the
opportunity, despite all the archangel’s denunciations and
forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat.
With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many
perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron
fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was
tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of
speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while
Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat’s bow, and with all the
reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon the
whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a
broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion,
temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next
instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily
into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea
at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was
harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman’s head; but the mate for ever sank.
It is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the
Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.
Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;
oftener the boat’s bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the
headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body. But
strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one,
when the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is
discernible; the man being stark dead.
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