By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other
side of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain
is readily made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body,
is at last locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point
of junction with its broad flukes or lobes.
If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could
be known on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest,
betrayed an unusual but still good-natured excitement.
Such an unwonted bustle was he in that the staid Starbuck,
his official superior, quietly resigned to him for the time
the sole management of affairs. One small, helping cause of all
this liveliness in Stubb, was soon made strangely manifest.
Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond
of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.
"A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go,
and cut me one from his small!"
Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not,
as a general thing, and according to the great military maxim,
make the enemy defray the current expenses of the war (at least
before realizing the proceeds of the voyage), yet now and then
you find some of these Nantucketers who have a genuine relish
for that particular part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb;
comprising the tapering extremity of the body.
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