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MOBY DICK; OR 
hung on to it to the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that 
when at length the ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in 
locking arms with the body; then, when the command was given 
to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain upon the 
timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that 
it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime everything in the 
Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of the deck was like 
walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and 
gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins 
were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain 
hand-spikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable 
fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timber-heads; and so low 
had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at 
all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed 
added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going 
over. 
“Hold on, hold on, won’t ye ?” cried Stubb to the body ; “don’t be in 
such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do some- 
thing or go for it. Ho use prying there; avast, I say with your 
handspikes, and run one of ye for a prayer-book and a pen-knife, and 
cut the big chains.” 
“Knife? Aye, aye,” cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter’s 
heavy hatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began 
slashing at the largest flukes-chains. But a few strokes, full of 
sparks, were given, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. 
With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the 
carcase sank. 
How, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm 
Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately 
accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great 
buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the sur- 
face. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken- 
hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their bones 
heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that 
this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so 
sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But 
it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with 
