So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved
against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised,
for the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier;
and stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first
sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower
in a vale.
"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and
thy harpoon are at hand!--Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore.
The boats!--stand by!"
Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men,
like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays
and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly
was dropped from his perch.
"Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat--a spare one,
rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine--
keep away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!"
As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being
the first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now
coming for the three crews. Ahab's boat was central; and cheering
his men, he told them he would take the whale head-and-head,--
that is, pull straight up to his forehead,--a not uncommon thing;
for when within a certain limit, such a course excludes
the coming onset from the whale's sidelong vision.
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