THE WHITE WHALE 523 
muttered “ whether these sharks swim to feast on a whale or on Ahab ? 
But pull on ! Aye, all alive, now — we near him. The helm ! take 
the helm ; let me pass,” and so saying, two of the oarsmen helped him 
forward to the bows of the still flying boat. 
At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along 
with the White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its 
advance as the whale sometimes will — and Ahab was fairly within the 
smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled 
round his great, Monadnock hump. He was even thus close to him; 
when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to 
the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into 
the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if 
sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically 
rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, 
so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated 
part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would have once more 
been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen — who fore- 
knew not the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared 
for its effects — these were flung out ; but so fell, that, in an instant two 
of them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a comb- 
ing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again ; the third man help- 
lessly drooping astern, but still afloat and swimming. 
Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, 
instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering 
sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new turns with 
the line, and hold it so ; and commanded the crew to turn round on their 
seats, and tow the boat up to the mark ; the moment the treacherous line 
felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air ! 
“What breaks in me ? Some sinew cracks ! — ’tis whole again ; oars ! 
oars ! Burst in upon him !” 
Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale 
wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay ; but in that evolu- 
tion, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly 
seeing in it the source of all his persecutions ; bethinking it — it may be 
— a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its ad- 
vancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam. 
