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MOBY DICK; OR 
out too, when you strike a hill. Hurrah ! this is the way a fellow 
feels when he’s going to Davy Jones — all a rush down an endless in- 
clined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!” 
But the monster’s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, 
he tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew 
round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in 
them; while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sound- 
ing would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, 
they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till 
at last — owing to the perpendicular strain from the head-line chocks 
of the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the 
blue — the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, 
while the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing 
to sound, for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of 
expending more line, though the position was a little ticklish. But 
though boats have been taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this 
“holding-on,” as it is called; this hooking up by the keen barbs of 
his live flesh from the back; this it is that often torments the Levia- 
than into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance of his foes. 
Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted whether 
this course is always the best ; for it is but reasonable to presume, 
that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, the more he is 
exhausted; because, owing to the enormous surface of him — in a 
full-grown sperm whale something less than 2000 square feet — the 
pressure of the water is immense. We all know what an astonishing 
atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under; even here, above 
ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on 
his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean ! It must at least 
equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated 
it at the rate of twenty line-of-battleships, with all their guns, and 
stores, and men on board. 
As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down 
into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any 
sort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its 
depths; what landsman would have thought, that beneath all that 
silence and placidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing 
