In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of
Gay-Headers. Tashtego's long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones,
and black rounding eyes--for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness,
but Antarctic in their glittering expression--all this sufficiently
proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud
warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose,
had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main.
But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland,
Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea;
the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow
of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs,
you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier
Puritans and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince
of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire.
Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black
negro-savage, with a lion-like tread--an Ahasuerus to behold.
Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors
called them ringbolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail
halyards to them.
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