Moby Dick

As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the deck;
in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased,
and in the after one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him;
some such fancy as the above seemed his.  And when he glanced
upon the green walls of the watery defile in which the ship
was then sailing, and bethought him that through that gate lay
the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same
gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his deadly end;
and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates
and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him
on with their curses;--when all these conceits had passed
through his brain, Ahab's brow was left gaunt and ribbed,
like the black sand beach after some stormy tide has been gnawing it,
without being able to drag the firm thing from its place.

But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and when,
after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod
at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side,
emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers
seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been gaining upon
the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so victoriously gained
upon the Malays.  But still driving on in the wake of the whales,
at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the ship neared them;
and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the boats.
But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the
Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels that were after them,--
though as yet a mile in their rear,--than they rallied again, and forming
in close ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked like
flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity.

Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash,
and after several hours' pulling were almost disposed to renounce
the chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave
animating tokens that they were now at last under the influence
of that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the
fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied*. The
compact martial columns in which they had been hitherto rapidly
and steadily swimming, were now broken up in one measureless rout;
and like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander,
they seemed going mad with consternation.  In all directions
expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither
and thither, by their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed
their distraction of panic.  This was still more strangely evinced
by those of their number, who, completely paralysed as it were,
helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled ships on the sea.
Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep,
pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not
possibly have evinced such excessive dismay.  But this occasional
timidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures.
Though banding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned
buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman.
Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold
of a theatre's pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire,
rush helter-skelter for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming,
and remorselessly dashing each other to death.  Best, therefore,
withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied whales before us,
for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not
infinitely outdone by the madness of men.


* To gally, or gallow, is to frighten excessively--
to confound with fright.  It is an old Saxon word.
It occurs once in Shakespeare:--

The wrathful skies Gallow the very wanderers of the dark And make
them keep their caves.

To common language, the word is now completely obsolete.
When the polite landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is
apt to set it down as one of the whaleman's self-derived savageries.
Much the same is it with many other sinewy Saxonisms of this sort,
which emigrated to New-England rocks with the noble brawn of the old
English emigrants in the time of the Commonwealth.  Thus, some of
the best and furthest-descended English words--the etymological Howards
and Percys--are now democratised, nay, plebeianised--so to speak--
in the New World.


Though many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,
yet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither
advanced nor retreated, but collectively remained in one place.
As is customary in those cases, the boats at once separated,
each making for some one lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal.
In about three minutes' time, Queequeg's harpoon was flung;
the stricken fish darted blinding spray in our faces, and then
running away with us like light, steered straight for the heart
of the herd.  Though such a movement on the part of the whale
struck under such circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented;
and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated; yet does it
present one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery.
For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the
frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist
in a delirious throb.

As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power
of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him;
as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced
as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us;
our beset boat was like a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest,
and striving to steer through their complicated channels and straits,