While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks;
and as the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed
one entire flank as he shot by them again; at that moment
a quick cry went up. Lashed round and round to the fish's back;
pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night,
the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him,
the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment
frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.
The harpoon dropped from his hand.
"Befooled, befooled!"--drawing in a long lean breath--"Aye, Parsee! I see
thee again.--Aye, and thou goest before; and this, this then is the hearse
that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of thy word.
Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those boats
are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me;
if not, Ahab is enough to die--Down, men! the first thing that but
offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon.
Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.--
Where's the whale? gone down again?"
But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping
with the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last
encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick
was now again steadily swimming forward; and had almost passed
the ship,--which thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction
to him, though for the present her headway had been stopped.
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