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MOBY DICK; OR 
But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will 
not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather 
round the moored carcass, that were he left so for six hours, say, on 
a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. 
In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so 
largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably 
diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, 
a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to 
tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the 
present case with the Pequod’s sharks; though, to be sure, any man 
unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night, 
would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, 
and those sharks the maggots in it. 
Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor- watch after his supper 
was concluded ; and when, accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle sea- 
man came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks ; 
for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lower- 
ing three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid 
sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an 
incesssant murdering of the sharks , 1 by striking the keen steel deep 
into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy 
confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not 
always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of 
the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only 
at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, 
and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over 
again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. 
Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and 
ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality 
1 The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel ; is 
about the bigness of a man’s spread hand; and in general shape corresponds 
to the garden implement after which it is named ; only its sides are perfectly 
flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon 
is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being used is occasionally 
honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty 
feet long, is inserted for a handle. 
