"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab, after allowing a little space for the light
to spread.

"See nothing, sir."

"Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought
for;--the top-gallant sails!--aye, they should have been kept on her
all night. But no matter--'tis but resting for the rush."

Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular
whale, continued through day into night, and through night into day, is
a thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such
is the wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincible
confidence acquired by some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket
commanders; that from the simple observation of a whale when last
descried, they will, under certain given circumstances, pretty
accurately foretell both the direction in which he will continue to
swim for a time, while out of sight, as well as his probable rate of
progression during that period. And, in these cases, somewhat as a
pilot, when about losing sight of a coast, whose general trending he
well knows, and which he desires shortly to return to again, but at
some further point; like as this pilot stands by his compass, and takes
the precise bearing of the cape at present visible, in order the more
certainly to hit aright the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be
visited: so does the fisherman, at his compass, with the whale; for
after being chased, and diligently marked, through several hours of
daylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the creature's future
wake through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious
mind of the hunter, as the pilot's coast is to him. So that to this
hunter's wondrous skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in