With straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edge of
the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old man's head.
Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship's
mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene;
and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!--"Sail on the"--
but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and whelmed
him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing to rise
on a towering crest, he shouted,--"Sail on the whale!--Drive him off!"
The Pequod's prows were pointed-, and breaking up the charmed circle,
she effectually parted the white whale from his victim.
As he sullenly swam off, the boats flew to the rescue.
Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes,
the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension
of Ahab's bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded
to his body's doom for a time, lying all crushed in the bottom
of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants.
Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds
from out ravines.
But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much
the more abbreviate it.
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