Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the
resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore;
or whether it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in him:
whichever was true, the White Whale's way now began to abate,
as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly nearing him once more;
though indeed the whale's last start had not been so long a one
as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves the unpitying
sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the boat;
and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades
became jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea,
at almost every dip.
"Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars.
Pull on! 'tis the better rest, the sharks' jaw than the yielding water."
"But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"
"They will last long enough! pull on!--But who can tell"--
he muttered--"whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale
or on Ahab?--But pull on! Aye, all alive, now--we near him.
The helm! take the helm! let me pass,"--and so saying two of the
oarsmen helped him forward to the bows of the still flying boat.
At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging
along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely
oblivious of its advance--as the whale sometimes will--and Ahab
was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off
from the whale's spout, curled round his great Monadnock hump;
he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back,
and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted
his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale.
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