The red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks
down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood,
which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake.
The slanting sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea,
sent back its reflection into every face, so that they all glowed
to each other like red men. And all the while, jet after jet
of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of the whale,
and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman;
as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line
attached to it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few
rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and again sent it
into the whale.
"Pull up--pull up!" he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning
whale relaxed in his wrath. "Pull up!--close to!" and the boat
ranged along the fish's flank. When reaching far over the bow,
Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept
it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking
to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed,
and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out.
But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish.
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