To this aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such immense caravans,
may be imputed the circumstance that even in the best cruising grounds,
you may now sometimes sail for weeks and months together,
without being greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly
saluted by what sometimes seems thousands on thousands.
Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles,
and forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon,
a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling
in the noon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets
of the Right Whale, which, dividing at top, falls over in two branches,
like the cleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting
spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist,
continually rising and falling away to leeward.
Seen from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill
of the sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually curling up into
the air, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze,
showed like the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis,
descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.
As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,
accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in
their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the plain;
even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through
the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle,
and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.
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