THE WHITE WHALE 
299 
flanking him on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for 
lance; and thus round and round the Pequod the battle went, while 
the multitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm 
Whale’s body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily 
drinking at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new 
bursting fountains that poured from smitten rock. 
At last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, 
he turned upon his hack a corpse. 
While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his 
flukes, and in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing, 
some conversation ensued between them. 
“I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard,” 
said Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do 
with so ignoble a leviathan. 
“Wants with it?” said Flask, coiling some spare line in the boat’s 
bow, “did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm 
Whale’s head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time 
a Right Whale’s on the larboard; did you ever hear, Stubb, that that 
ship can never afterwards capsize ?” 
“Why not ?” 
“I don’t know, hut I heard that gamboge ghost of a 
Fedallah saying so, and he seems to know all about ship’s 
charms. But I sometimes think he’ll charm the ship to no good 
at last. I don’t half like that chap, Stubb. Did you ever 
notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake’s head, 
Stubb?” 
“Sink him ! I never look at him at all ; but if ever I get a chance 
of a dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one 
by; look down there, Flask” — pointing into the sea with a peculiar 
motion of both hands — “Aye, will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah 
to be the devil in disguise. Do you believe that cock-and-bull story 
about his having been stowed away on hoard ship? He’s the devil, 
I say. The reason why you don’t see his tail, is because he tucks it 
up out of sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess. 
D — n him! now that I think of it, he’s always wanting oakum to 
stuff into the toes of his boots.” 
