An instant more, and all four boats
were diagonically in the whale's immediate wake, while stretching
from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he made.
It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight.
The whale was now going head out, and sending his spout
before him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poor
fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand,
now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at
every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea,
or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin.
So have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted broken
circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks.
But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make
known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea,
was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice,
save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and this
made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still,
in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail,
there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.
Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod's
boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game,
Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually
long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.
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