A wild sight it was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three
mast-heads. They seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and
bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruising.
Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung
over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided
close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each
other that we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one
ship to those of the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen,
mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one word to our own
look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from below.
"Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?"
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks,
was in the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow
fell from his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain,
he in vain strove to make himself heard without it.
Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance between us.
While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod were evincing
their observance of this ominous incident at the first mere mention
of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a moment paused;
it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat
to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade.
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