me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest
problems of life seem clearing; but clouds sweep between--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!--Mast-head 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? sees't 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
maintaining 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 utter-most 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 lengthwise,
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 flashed