268 
MOBY DICK; OR 
be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are 
faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several most 
important, however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be painted. 
CHAPTER LXIII 
stubb's supper 
Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was 
a calm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow 
business of towing the trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen 
men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs 
and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish 
corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long 
intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness 
of the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or 
whatever they call it, in China, four or five labourers on the footpath 
will draw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but 
this grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden with pig- 
lead in bulk. 
Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod’ s 
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw 
Ahab dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Va- 
cantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual 
orders for securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to 
a seaman, went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again 
until morning. 
Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had 
evinced his customary activity, to call it so ; yet now that the creature 
was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience* or despair, seemed 
working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that 
Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales 
were brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand 
monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought from the 
sound on the Pequod’ s decks, that all hands were preparing to cast 
anchor in the deep ; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, 
