under me, whoever you are that will now
help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning
whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own
unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattress that is
all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee,
thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye
assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all
that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh,
oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping
soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let
Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over-salted death,
though;--cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry
ere we die!"

"Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. 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
harpooners 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.

"I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy
hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked
keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and
Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and
without me? Am I cut off