ST. JAGO'S SAILOR.
That Spaniard's mad or drunk. But that can't be, or else in his one
case our old Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in working.

5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR.
What's that I saw--lightning? Yes.

SPANISH SAILOR.
No; Daggoo showing his teeth.

DAGGOO (SPRINGING).
Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!

SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM).
Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!

ALL.
A row! a row! a row!

TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF).
A row a'low, and a row aloft--Gods and men--both brawlers! Humph!

BELFAST SAILOR.
A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge in with
ye!

ENGLISH SAILOR.
Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard's knife! A ring, a ring!

OLD MANX SAILOR.
Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain struck
Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad'st thou the
ring?

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK.
Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef
topsails!

ALL.
The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.)


PIP (SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS).
Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash! there goes the
jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes the royal
yard! It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of
the year! Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they
go, all cursing, and here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em; they're on
the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But
those chaps there are worse yet--they are your white squalls, they.
White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I heard all
their chat just now, and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but spoken
of once! and only this evening--it makes me jingle all over like my
tambourine--that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him!
Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have
mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men
that have no bowels to feel fear!



CHAPTER 41

Moby Dick.


I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the
rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted,
and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my
soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's
quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history
of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken
our oaths of violence and revenge.

For some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,
secluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly
frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of
his existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen
him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given
battle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of
whale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the
entire watery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their
quest along solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole
twelvemonth or more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling
sail of any sort; the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the
irregularity of the times of sailing from home; all these, with other
circumstances, direct and indirect, long obstructed the spread
through the whole world-wide whaling-fleet of the special
individualizing tidings concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to be
doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered, at such
or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of
uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great
mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them; to some
minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in
question must have been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the
Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent
instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster
attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly
gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part,
were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it
were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the


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