"
"How it was exactly," continued the one-armed commander,
"I do not know; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth,
caught there somehow; but we didn't know it then; so that when we
afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump!
instead of the other whale's; that went off to windward, all fluking.
Seeing how matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was--
the noblest and biggest I ever saw, sir, in my life--I resolved
to capture him, spite of the boiling rage he seemed to be in.
And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or the tooth
it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat's
crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say,
I jumped into my first mate's boat--Mr. Mounttop's here
(by the way, Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain);--
as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see,
was gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the
first harpoon, let this old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord,
look you, sir--hearts and souls alive, man--the next instant,
in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both eyes out--all befogged
and bedeadened with black foam--the whale's tail looming straight
up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple.
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