THE WHITE WHALE 
205 
pooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous 
sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her- boats with out- 
stretched sails*, like a wild hen after her screaming brood; all this 
was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of 
his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man’s 
ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world; — 
neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man 
does, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed, 
churned circle of the hunted sperm whale. 
The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming 
more and more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun 
cloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of vapour no longer 
blended, hut tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemed 
separating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart; Star- 
buck giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward. Our 
sail was now set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; 
the boat going with such madness through the water, that the lee 
oars could scarcely he worked rapidly enough to escape being tom 
from the rowlocks. 
Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist ; neither 
ship nor boat to he seen. 
“Give way, men,” whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft 
the sheet of his sail; “there is time to kill fish yet before the squall 
comes. There’s white water again ! — -close to ! Spring !” 
Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted 
that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, 
when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck sai ! d: “Stand 
up!” and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet. 
Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death 
peril so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense 
countenance of the mate in the stem of the boat, they knew that the 
imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing 
sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the 
boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing 
around us like the erected crests of enraged serpents. 
“That’s his hump. There, there, give it to him!” whispered Star- 
buck. 
