331 
THE WHITE WHALE 
boat and marring the bows. It was his death-stroke. For, by this 
time, so spent was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away 
from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently 
flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like 
a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a 
log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As 
when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some 
mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings, the spray- 
column lowers and lowers to the ground — so the last, long, dying 
spout of the whale. 
Soon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the 
body showed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled. 
Immediately, by Starbuck’s orders, lines were secured to it at different 
points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken whale 
being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords. By very 
heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was trans- 
ferred to her side, and was strongly secured there by the stiffest 
fluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially upheld, the body 
would at once sink to the bottom. 
It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the 
spade, the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded 
in his flesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described. But 
as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies 
of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and 
no prominence of any kind to denote their place; therefore, there 
must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present case 
fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious 
was the fact of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far 
from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had 
darted that stone lance ? And when ? It might have been darted 
by some Nor’-West Indian long before America was discovered. 
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this mon- 
strous cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to 
further discoveries, by the ship’s being unprecedentedly dragged over 
sideways to the sea, owing to the body’s immensely increasing tend- 
ency to sink. However, Starbuck, .who had the ordering of affairs, 
