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- 17013
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:49:30.771Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 16946
- text
- “And harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.”
“Aye, aye—they were mine—_my_ irons,” cried Ahab, exultingly—“but on!”
“Give me a chance, then,” said the Englishman, good-humoredly. “Well,
this old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all
afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!
“Aye, I see!—wanted to part it; free the fast-fish—an old trick—I know
him.”
“How it was exactly,” continued the one-armed commander, “I do not
know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there
somehow; but we didn’t know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled
on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other
whale’s; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters
stood, and what a noble great whale it was—the noblest and biggest I
ever saw, sir, in my life—I resolved to capture him, spite of the
boiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would
get loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a
devil of a boat’s crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I
say, I jumped into my first mate’s boat—Mr. Mounttop’s here (by the
way, Captain—Mounttop; Mounttop—the captain);—as I was saying, I jumped
into Mounttop’s boat, which, d’ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with
mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old
great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir—hearts and souls
alive, man—the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat—both eyes
out—all befogged and bedeadened with black foam—the whale’s tail
looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble
steeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday,
with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after
the second iron, to toss it overboard—down comes the tail like a Lima
tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and,
flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was
all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I
seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung
to that like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at
the same instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down
like a flash; and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near
me caught me here” (clapping his hand just below his shoulder); “yes,
caught me just here, I say, and bore me down to Hell’s flames, I was
thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the good God, the barb
ript its way along the flesh—clear along the whole length of my
arm—came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;—and that gentleman there
will tell you the rest (by the way, captain—Dr. Bunger, ship’s surgeon:
Bunger, my lad,—the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the
yarn.”
The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all
the time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote
his gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but
sober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and
patched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between
a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,
occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two
crippled captains. But, at his superior’s introduction of him to Ahab,
he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain’s bidding.
“It was a shocking bad wound,” began the whale-surgeon; “and, taking my
advice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy—”
“Samuel Enderby is the name of my ship,” interrupted the one-armed
captain, addressing Ahab; “go on, boy.”
“Stood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing
hot weather there on the Line. But it was no use—I did all I could; sat
up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet—”
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