- char_end
- 1234884
- char_start
- 1226908
- chunk_index
- 173
- chunk_total
- 178
- estimated_tokens
- 1994
- source_file_key
- moby-dick
- text
- the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his
sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old
Ahab.
The harpoon dropped from his hand.
“Befooled, befooled!”—drawing in a long lean breath—“Aye, Parsee! I see
thee again.—Aye, and thou goest before; and this, _this_ then is the
hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of
thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those
boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me;
if not, Ahab is enough to die—Down, men! the first thing that but
offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are
not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.—Where’s the
whale? gone down again?”
But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the
corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter
had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again
steadily swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,—which thus
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.
Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,
instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering
sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with
the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on their
seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line
felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air!
“What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!—’tis whole again; oars! oars!
Burst in upon him!”
Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled
round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution,
catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing
in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it—it may be—a
larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing
prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.
Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. “I grow blind; hands!
stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is’t night?”
“The whale! The ship!” cried the cringing oarsmen.
“Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for
ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I
see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?”
But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the
sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks
burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat
lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew,
trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.
Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego’s mast-head hammer
remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as
with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his own
forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon the
bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon
as he.
“The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of
air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a
woman’s fainting fit. Up helm, I say—ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is
this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities?
Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up
helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on
towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me
now!”
“Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now
help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning
whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb’s own
unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is
all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee,
thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins
of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost.