By this motion the whale must best and most
comprehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him.
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly
round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his
vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more
deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him,
as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's
elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered
in the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple
to swim,--though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart
of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen,
like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst.
From the boat's fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly
eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could not
succor him; more than enough was it for them to look to themselves.
For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale's aspect,
and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles
he made, that he seemed horizontally swooping upon them.
And though the other boats, unharmed, still hovered hard by;
still they dared not pull into the eddy to strike, lest that should be
the signal for the instant destruction of the jeopardized castaways,
Ahab and all; nor in that case could they themselves hope to escape.
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