No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token
of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows,
an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.
As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again,
Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk,
with a wild voice exclaimed--"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick
and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!"
"What was it, Sir?" said Flask.
"The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld,
and returned to their ports to tell of it."
But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel;
the rest as silently following.
Whatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected
with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it
being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it
with portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all
of them declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean,
yet very few of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning
its true nature and form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish
to the sperm whale his only food. For though other species of whales find
their food above water, and may be seen by man in the act of feeding,
the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones below
the surface; and only by inference is it that any one can tell
of what, precisely, that food consists.
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