It was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells ofthe omnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolledalong the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundlessbowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it wouldtip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, thatalmost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dipinto the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadingsto gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slidedown its other side;- all these, with the cries of the headsmen andharpooneers, and the shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with thewondrous sight of the ivory Pequod bearing down upon her boats withoutstretched sails, like a wild hen after her screaming brood;- allthis was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the bosom ofhis wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man'shost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world;-neither of these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that mandoes, who for the first time finds himself pulling into the charmed,churned circle of the hunted sperm whale.
The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming moreand more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the duncloud-shadows flung upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer blended,but tilted everywhere to right and left; the whales seemedseparating their wakes. The boats were pulled more apart; Starbuckgiving chase to three whales running dead to leeward. Our sail was nowset, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; the boatgoing with such madness through the water, that the lee oars couldscarcely be worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from therow-locks.
Soon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist;neither ship nor boat to be seen.
"Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft thesheet of his sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the squallcomes. There's white water again!- close to! Spring!"Soon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denotedthat the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard,when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: "Stand up!"and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.
Though not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and deathperil so close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intensecountenance of the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that theimminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowingsound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile theboat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissingaround us like the erected crests of enraged serpents.
"That's his hump. There, there, give it to him!" whispered Starbuck.
A short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted ironof Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible pushfrom astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; thesail collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by;something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. Thewhole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelterinto the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, andharpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed bythe iron, escaped.
Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimminground it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across thegunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees inthe sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that to ourdownward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grownup to us from the bottom of the ocean.
The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklerstogether; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us likea white fire upon the prairie, in which unconsumed, we were burning;immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; aswell roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace ashail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack,and mist, grew darker with the shadows of night; no sign of the shipcould be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out theboat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the officeof life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof matchkeg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp inthe lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it toQueequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then,he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of thatalmighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of aman without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.
Wet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship orboat, we lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spreadover the sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat.
Suddenly Queequeg started to his feet, hollowing his hand to hisear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hithertomuffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thickmists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we allsprang into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearingright down upon us within a distance of not much more than its length.
Floating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for oneinstant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's bows like a chip at thebase of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and itwas seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam forit, were dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken upand safely landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the otherboats had cut loose from their fish and returned to the ship in goodtime. The ship had given us up, but was still cruising, if haply itmight light upon some token of our perishing,- an oar or a lance pole.
