With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift,
the three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's reappearance.
"An hour," said Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern; and he gazed
beyond the whale's place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing
vacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes
seemed whirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle.
The breeze now freshened; the sea began to swell.
"The birds!--the birds!" cried Tashtego.
In long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds
were now all flying towards Ahab's boat; and when within a few
yards began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round
and round, with joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was
keener than man's; Ahab could discover no sign in the sea.
But suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly
saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful
celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned,
and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white,
glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom.
It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast,
shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea.
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