261 
THE WHITE WHALE 
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that 
the seamen at the main and mizzen-mastheads were already drowsy. 
So that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and 
for every swing that we made there was a nod from below from 
the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent 
crests; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, 
and the sun over all. 
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like 
vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency 
preserved me ; with a shock I came back to life. And lo ! close under 
our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling 
in the water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy 
back of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror. 
But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon 
tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the wdiale looked like a portly 
burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor 
whale, was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter’s wand, the 
sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once started into wakeful- 
ness; and more than a score of voices from all parts of the vessel, 
simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth the 
accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly spouted the 
sparkling brine into the air. 
“Clear away the boats! Luff!” cried Ahab. And obeying his 
own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman could 
handle the spokes. 
The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale ; 
and ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to 
the leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few 
ripples as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be 
alarmed, Ahab gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man 
must speak but in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the 
gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the 
calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we 
thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his tail 
forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower swal- 
lowed up. 
