"The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice from the low cabin-window there;
"O master, my master, come back!"
But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then;
and the boat leaped on.
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship,
when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters
beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars,
every time they dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied
the boat with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening
to the whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times
apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures
hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east.
But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod
since the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it
was that Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians,
and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the sharks--
a matter sometimes well known to affect them,--however it was,
they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others.
"Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side,
and following with his eyes the receding boat--"canst thou
yet ring boldly to that sight?--lowering thy keel among
ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase;
and this the critical third day?--For when three days
flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure
the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third
the evening and the end of that thing--be that end what it may.
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