494 
MOBY DICK; OR 
and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale- 
boat; but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see 
through the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a 
horse. 
“Hast seen the White Whale V 9 
“Look!” replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and 
with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck. 
“Hast killed him V 9 
“The harpoon is not yet forged that will ever do that,” answered 
the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, 
whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing to- 
gether. 
“Hot forged!” and snatching Perth’s levelled iron from the crotch, 
Ahab held it out, exclaiming — “Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this 
hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by light- 
ning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot 
place behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed 
life!” 
“Then God keep thee, old man — see’st thou that” — pointing to the 
hammock — “I bury but one of five stout men who were alive only 
yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest 
were buried before they died ; you sail upon their tomb.” Then turn- 
ing to his crew — “Are ye ready there? place the plank then on the 
rail, and lift the body; so, then — Oh! God! — advancing towards the 
hammock with uplifted hands “may the resurrection and the 
life ” 
“Brace forward ! Up helm !” cried Ahab like lightning to his men. 
But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape 
the sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea ; 
not so quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have 
sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism. 
As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange 
lifebuoy hanging at the Pequod’s stern came into conspicuous 
relief. 
“Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!” cried a foreboding voice in her 
wake. “In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly from our sad burial. Ye but 
turn us your taffrail to show us your coffin!” 
