And now,
as we eighteen men with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred
and eighty thumbs and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour
upon that inert, sluggish corpse in the sea; and it seemed
hardly to budge at all, except at long intervals; good evidence
was hereby furnished of the enormousness of the mass we moved.
For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they call it,
in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will draw
a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour;
but this grand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden
with piglead in bulk.
Darkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Pequod's
main-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw
Ahab dropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks.
Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued
the usual orders for securing it for the night, and then
handing his lantern to a seaman, went his way into the cabin,
and did not come forward again until morning.
Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab
had evinced his customary activity, to call it so;
yet now that the creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction,
or impatience, or despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight
of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain;
and though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship,
all that would not one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object.
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