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1It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now going head out, and sending his spout before
2him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand, now to
3that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or
4sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken
5circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries
6will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him; he had
7no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while
8still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so
9pitied. Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod's boats the advantage, and rather than be thus
10foiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the last chance
11would for ever escape. But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three tigers--Queequeg,
12Tashtego, Daggoo--instinctively sprang to their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their
13barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors
14of foam and white-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's headlong rush, bumped the German's aside with
15such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.
16"Don't be afraid, my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon them as he shot by; "ye'll be picked up
17presently--all right--I saw some sharks astern--St. Bernard's dogs, you know--relieve distressed travellers. Hurrah!
18this is the way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah!--Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad
19cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain--makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when
20you fasten to him that way; and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way
21a fellow feels when he's going to Davy Jones--all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the
22everlasting mail!" But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he tumultuously sounded. With a grating
23rush, the three lines flew round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them; while so fearful
24were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they
25caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at last--owing to the perpendicular strain from the
26lead-lined chocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue--the gunwales of the bows were
27almost even with the water, while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for some
28time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But
29though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this "holding on," as it is called; this hooking up by
30the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again to
31meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is
32always the best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, the more he
33is exhausted. Because, owing to the enormous surface of him--in a full grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square
34feet--the pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up
35under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two
36hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the
37weight of twenty line-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on board. As the three boats lay there
38on that gently rolling sea, gazing down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort, nay,
39not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that
40silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of
41perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was
42suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the
43creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said--"Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with
44fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron
45as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" This the
46creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his
47tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him from the Pequod's fish-spears! In that
48sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough
49and broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the wounded whale must have been such huge
50phantoms flitting over his head! "Stand by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly vibrated in the
51water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by magnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that
52every oarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in great part from the downward strain at the bows, the
53boats gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are scared from it into
54the sea. "Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck again; "he's rising." The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one
55hand's breadth could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all dripping into the boats, and soon the
56whale broke water within two ship's lengths of the hunters. His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most
57land animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some
58degree at least instantly shut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it is to
59have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon,
60a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary
61pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet
62so vast is the quantity of blood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus
63bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the
64well-springs of far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew
65over his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by steady jets from the new made wound,
66which kept continually playing, while the natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending
67its affrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because no vital part of him had thus far
68been struck. His life, as they significantly call it, was untouched.
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