521 
THE WHITE WHALE 
flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in 
a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk 
round the marble trunk of the whale. 
Give way ! cried Ahab to the oarsmen and the boats darted for- 
ward to the attack ; but maddened by yesterday’s fresh irons that cor- 
roded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels 
that fell from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading 
Ins broad white forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted to- 
gether ; as head on, he came churning his tail among the boats ; and once 
more flailed them apart ; spilling out the irons and lances from the two 
mates boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows, 
but leaving Ahab’s almost without a scar. 
While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks ; and 
as the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire 
flank as he shot by them again ; at that moment a quick cry went up. 
Lashed round and round to the fish’s hack; pinioned in the turns upon 
turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involu- 
tions of the lines around him, the half tom body of the Parsee was seen ; 
his sable raiment frayed to shreds ; his distended eyes turned full upon 
old Ahab. 
The harpoon dropped from his hand. 
“Befooled, befooled !” — drawing in a long lean breath — “Aye, Parsee ! 
I see thee again — Aye, and thou goest before ; and this, this then is the 
hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of 
thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! 
those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return 
to me ; if not, Ahab is enough to die — Down, men ! the first thing that 
but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye 
are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me — 
Where’s the whale ? gone down again ?” 
But he looked too nigh the boat ; for as if bent upon escaping with 
the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter 
had been hut a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again 
steadily swiming forward; and had almost passed the ship, — which 
thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for 
the present her headway had been stopped. Ho seemed swimming with 
