Prick ears, and listen!"
"If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day,
when the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs,
and know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago,
by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be?
The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold.
And what's the horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign--
the roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes
to think of thee."
"There's another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men
in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg--
all tattooing--looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says
the Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;
thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels,
I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the back country.
And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of his thigh--
I guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don't know what to make
of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers.
But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled
out of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual.
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