So that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars,
and for every swing that we made there was a nod from below from
the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests;
and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west,
and the sun over all.
Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes;
like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible,
gracious agency preserved me; with a shock I came back to life.
And lo! close under our lee, not forty fathoms off, a gigantic
Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the capsized hull
of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue,
glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating
in the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his
vapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe
of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last.
As if struck by some enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship
and every sleeper in it all at once started into wakefulness;
and more than a score of voices from all parts of the vessel,
simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted forth
the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly
spouted the sparkling brine into the air.
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