hrough several hours of
daylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the creature's future
wake through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious
mind of the hunter, as the pilot's coast is to him. So that to this
hunter's wondrous skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in
water, a wake, is to all desired purposes well-nigh as reliable as the
steadfast land. And as the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway
is so familiarly known in its every pace, that, with watches in their
hands, men time his rate, as doctors that of a baby's pulse; and
lightly say of it, the up train or the down train will reach such or
such a spot, at such or such an hour; even so, almost, there are
occasions when these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the
deep, according to the observed humor of his speed; and say to
themselves, so many hours hence this whale will have gone two hundred
miles, will have about reached this or that degree of latitude or
longitude. But to render this acuteness at all successful in the end,
the wind and the sea must be the whaleman's allies; for of what present
avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures
him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port?
Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile matters
touching the chase of whales.

The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a
cannon-ball, missent, becomes a ploughshare and turns up the level
field.

"By salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but this swift motion of the deck
creeps up one's legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two
brave fellows!--Ha! ha! Some one take me up, and launch me,
spine-wise, on the sea,--for by live-oaks! my spine's a keel. Ha, ha!
we go the gait that leaves no dust behind!"

"There she blows--she blows!--she blows!--right ahead!" was now the
mast-head cry.

"Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it--ye can't escape--blow on and split
your spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your
trump--blister your lungs!--Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller
shuts his water-gate upon the stream!"

And Stubb did but speak out for well-nigh all that crew. The frenzies
of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine
worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might
have felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the
growing awe of Ahab, but they