Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us.
One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed
hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length,
and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet
his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it
had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head,
and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a
Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes,
still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's
ears newly arrived from foreign parts.
"Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale;
"him fast! him fast!--Who line him! Who struck?--Two whale;
one big, one little!"
"What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck.
"Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing down.
As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled
out hundreds of fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding,
he floats up again, and shows the slackened curling line
buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now,
Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan,
by which the young cub seemed still tethered to its dam.
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