Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this;
if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up."
From the ship's bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive;
hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained
in their hands, just as they had darted from their various employments;
all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side
to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad
band of overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed.
Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect,
and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his
forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled.
Some fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks,
the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks.
Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents
down a flume.
"The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat;
"its wood could only be American!"
Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel;
but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off
the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time,
he lay quiescent.
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