THE WHITE WHALE 293 
now to receive it” ; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck’s 
hands, he caught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards 
the boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from 
rowing ; the boat drifted a little towards the ship’s stern ; so that, as if 
by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel’s eager hand. 
He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the 
letter on it, sent it thus loaded hack into the ship. It fell at Ahab’s 
feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out his comrades to give way with 
their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away 
from the Pequod. 
As, after this interlude, the seaman resumed their work upon the 
jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to 
this wild affair. 
CHAPTER LXXI 
THE MONKEY-ROPE 
In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, 
there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. How 
hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There 
is no staying in any one place ; for at one and the same time everything 
has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who en- 
deavours the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way 
a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the 
whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole 
there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and 
weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was in- 
serted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, 
as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s hack for the special 
purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require 
that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or 
stripping operation is concluded. The whale, he it observed, lies 
almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated 
upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the 
poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale, and half in the 
water, as the vast mass revolves like a treadmill beneath him. 
