"Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd
jet that way, and then disappears."
It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken
some other thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved;
for hardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed
to its pin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra,
that made the air vibrate as with the combined discharge of rifles.
The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as--
much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet,
less than a mile ahead--Moby Dick bodily burst into view!
For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush
of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal
his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching.
Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths,
the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure
element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam,
shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more.
In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane;
in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.
"There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his
immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like
to Heaven.
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