Below in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn,
when he came to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask,
not unaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed,
and thus explained the wonder.
Those rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers
of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or some dams
that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and kept
company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail.
But this only the more affected some of them, because most mariners
cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not only from
their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the human look
of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising
from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances,
seals have more than once been mistaken for men.
But the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible
confirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning.
At sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;
and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep
(for sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it
was thus with the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may,
he had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard--a cry
and a rushing--and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air;
and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue
of the sea.
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