But as the stumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead
bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly healed
around them, and no prominence of any kind to denote their place;
therefore, there must needs have been some other unknown reason
in the present case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to.
But still more curious was the fact of a lance-head of stone being
found in him, not far from the buried iron, the flesh perfectly
firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And when?
It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before
America was discovered.
What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous cabinet
there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries,
by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea,
owing to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink.
However, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it
to the last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length
the ship would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking
arms with the body; then, when the command was given to break clear
from it, such was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which
the fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible
to cast them off.
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