His spout was short, slow, and laborious;
coming forth with a choking sort of gush, and spending itself
in torn shreds, followed by strange subterranean commotions in him,
which seemed to have egress at his other buried extremity,
causing the waters behind him to upbubble.
"Who's got some paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache,
I'm afraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache!
Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys.
It's the first foul wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look,
did ever whale yaw so before? it must be, he's lost his tiller."
As an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck
load of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on
her way; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then
partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause
of his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin.
Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it,
it were hard to say.
"Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that
wounded arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him.
"Mind he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck.
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