se could they
themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they remained on
the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old
man's head.

Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship's
mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene;
and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!--"Sail on
the"--but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and
whelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing
to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,--"Sail on the whale!--Drive him
off!"

The Pequod's prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle, she
effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly swam
off, the boats flew to the rescue.

Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine
caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily strength did
crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom: for a time, lying
all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under foot
of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as
desolate sounds from out ravines.

But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more
abbreviate it. In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes condense
to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused
through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary
in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their
life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous
intensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures
contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.

"The harpoon," said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on one
bended arm--"is it safe?"

"Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it," said Stubb, showing it.

"Lay it before me;--any missing men?"

"One, two, three, four, five;--there were five oars, sir, and here are
five men."

"That's good.--Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there!
there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!--Hands off from me!
The eternal sap runs up in Ahab's bones again! Set the sail; out oars;
the helm!"

It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked
up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is thus
continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now. Bu