For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers,
with every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known
to turn around suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their
boats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.
Already several fatalities had attended his chase.
But though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore,
were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, in most instances,
such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity,
that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly
regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent.
Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds
of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips
of chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam
out of the white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene,
exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.
His three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in
the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow,
had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe,
blindly seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life
of the whale.
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