FRENCH SAILOR.
Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it! Split
jibs! tear yourselves!

TASHTEGO.
(QUIETLY SMOKING)
That's a white man; he calls that fun: humph! I save my sweat.

OLD MANX SAILOR.
I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what they are
dancing over. I'll dance over your grave, I will--that's the
bitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round
corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the
green-skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as
you scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it.
Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once.

3D NANTUCKET SAILOR.
Spell oh!--whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in a
calm--give us a whiff, Tash.

(THEY CEASE DANCING, AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS. MEANTIME THE SKY
DARKENS--THE WIND RISES.)

LASCAR SAILOR.
By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born, high-tide
Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!

MALTESE SAILOR.
(RECLINING AND SHAKING HIS CAP.)
It's the waves--the snow's caps turn to jig it now. They'll shake
their tassels soon. Now would all the waves were women, then I'd go
drown, and chassee with them evermore! There's naught so sweet on
earth--heaven may not match it!--as those swift glances of warm, wild
bosoms in the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe,
bursting grapes.

SICILIAN SAILOR.
(RECLINING.)
Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad--fleet interlacings of the
limbs--lithe swayings--coyings--flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all
graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come
satiety. Eh, Pagan? (NUDGING.)

TAHITAN SAILOR.
(RECLINING ON A MAT.)
Hail, holy nakedness of our dancing girls!--the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low
veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I still rest me on thy mat, but the soft
soil has slid! I saw thee woven in the wood, my mat! green the first
day I brought ye thence; now worn and wilted quite. Ah me!--not thou
nor I can bear the change! How then, if so be transplanted to yon
sky? Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears,
when they leap down the crags and drown the villages?--The blast! the
blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (LEAPS TO HIS FEET.)

PORTUGUESE SAILOR.
How the sea rolls swashing 'gainst the side! Stand by for reefing,
hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell they'll go
lunging presently.

DANISH SAILOR.
Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest! Well
done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He's no more afraid
than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with
storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!

4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him he must
always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a
pistol--fire your ship right into it!

ENGLISH SAILOR.
Blood! but that old man's a grand old cove! We are the lads to hunt
him up his whale!

ALL.
Aye! aye!

OLD MANX SAILOR.
How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of tree to
live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the
crew's cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of
weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea.
Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in
the sky--lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.

DAGGOO.
What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me! I'm quarried
out of it!

SPANISH SAILOR.
(ASIDE.) He wants to bully, ah!--the old grudge makes me touchy
(ADVANCING.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable dark side of
mankind--devilish dark at that. No offence.

DAGGOO (GRIMLY).
None.



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