520 
MOBY DICK; OR 
third day? — For when three days flow together in one continuous in- 
tense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the noon, 
and the third the evening and the end of that thing — be that end what 
it may. Oh ! my God ! what is this that shoots through me, and leaves 
me so deadly calm, yet expectant, — fixed at the top of a shudder! 
Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all 
the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale 
glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous 
blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but clouds sweep be- 
tween — Is my journey’s end coming? My legs feel faint; like his who 
has footed it all day. Feel thy heart, — beats it yet? — Stir thyself, 
Starbuck ! — stave it off — move, move ! speak aloud ! — Masthead there ! 
See ye my boy’s hand on the hill ? — Crazed ; — aloft there ! — keep thy 
keenest eye upon the boats: — mark well the whale! — Ho! again! — 
drive off that hawk ! see ! he pecks — he tears the vane” — pointing to the 
red flag flying at the main-truck — “Ha ! he soars away with it ! — 
Where’s the old man now ? see’st thou that sight, oh Ahab ! — shudder, 
shudder !” 
The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast- 
heads — a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had 
sounded; but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on 
his way a little sideways from, the vessel ; the becharmed crew maintain- 
ing the profoundest silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and 
hammered against the opposing bow. 
“Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost 
heads drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no 
coffin and no hearse can be mine : — and hemp only can kill me ! Ha ! 
ha!” 
Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; 
then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg 
of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard ; 
a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled 
with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot length- 
wise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of 
mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell 
swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters 
