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1At day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh. "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab after allowing a little
2space for the light to spread. "See nothing, sir." "Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought
3for;--the top-gallant sails!--aye, they should have been kept on her all night. But no matter--'tis but resting for the
4rush." Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular whale, continued through day into night, and
5through night into day, is a thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such is the wonderful skill,
6prescience of experience, and invincible confidence acquired by some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket
7commanders; that from the simple observation of a whale when last descried, they will, under certain given
8circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both the direction in which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of
9sight, as well as his probable rate of progression during that period. And, in these cases, somewhat as a pilot, when
10about losing sight of a coast, whose general trending he well knows, and which he desires shortly to return to again,
11but at some further point; like as this pilot stands by his compass, and takes the precise bearing of the cape at
12present visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be visited: so
13does the fisherman, at his compass, with the whale; for after being chased, and diligently marked, through several hours
14of daylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the creature's future wake through the darkness is almost as
15established to the sagacious mind of the hunter, as the pilot's coast is to him. So that to this hunter's wondrous
16skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all desired purposes well nigh as reliable as
17the steadfast land. And as the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in its every pace,
18that, with watches in their hands, men time his rate as doctors that of a baby's pulse; and lightly say of it, the up
19train or the down train will reach such or such a spot, at such or such an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions
20when these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep, according to the observed humor of his speed; and say to
21themselves, so many hours hence this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about reached this or that degree
22of latitude or longitude. But to render this acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the sea must be the
23whaleman's allies; for of what present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him he is
24exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port? Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile
25matters touching the chase of whales. The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannon-ball, missent,
26becomes a plough-share and turns up the level field. "By salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but this swift motion of the deck
27creeps up one's legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two brave fellows!--Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and
28launch me, spine-wise, on the sea,--for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait that leaves no dust
29behind!" "There she blows--she blows!--she blows!--right ahead!" was now the mast-head cry. "Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I
30knew it--ye can't escape--blow on and split your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your
31trump--blister your lungs!--Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his watergate upon the stream!" And Stubb
32did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up,
33like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt before; these were not only
34now kept out of sight through the growing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid
35prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring
36perils of the previous day; the rack of the past night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which
37their wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled along. The wind
38that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the
39symbol of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race. They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that
40held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things--oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and
41hemp--yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by
42the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and
43guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord
44and keel did point to. The rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted with
45arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others, shading
46their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready
47and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might
48destroy them! "Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after the lapse of some minutes since the
49first cry, no more had been heard. "Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet that way,
50and then disappears." It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some other thing for the
51whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its
52pin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with the combined discharges of
53rifles. The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as--much nearer to the ship than the place of the
54imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead--Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not
55by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far
56more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus
57booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the
58distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases,
59this breaching is his act of defiance. "There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his immeasurable
60bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and
61relieved against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment, intolerably glittered and
62glared like a glacier; and stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling intensity, to the dim
63mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale. "Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and thy
64harpoon are at hand!--Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore. The boats!--stand by!" Unmindful of the tedious
65rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and halyards;
66while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his perch. "Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had
67reached his boat--a spare one, rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine--keep away from the
68boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!"
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