502 
MOBY DICK; OR 
wooing vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his 
eyes seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. 
The breeze now freshened ; the sea began to swell. 
“Th.e birds ! — the birds !” cried Tashtego. 
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were 
now all flying towards Ahab’s boat ; and when within a few yards began 
fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous, 
expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man’s ; Ahab could dis- 
cover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and into its 
depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white 
weasel, with a wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, 
till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked 
rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable 
bottom. It was Moby Dick’s open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast, 
shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glitter- 
ing mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb; 
and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled 
the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon 
Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and 
seizing Perth’s harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and 
stand by to stem. 
How, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its 
axis, its bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while 
yet under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, 
with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly trans- 
planted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his plaited head 
lengthwise beneath the boat. 
Through and through ; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled 
for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of 
a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his 
mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into 
the open air, and one of the teeth caught in a rowlock. The bluish pearl- 
white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab’s head, 
and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale now 
shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With un- 
astonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the tiger- 
