t
the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale,
for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a
velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances,
pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a
hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long a period, such an
unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing barely tolerable
only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself, then, as it
sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate means of
overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and were
soon swayed up to their cranes--the two parts of the wrecked boat having
been previously secured by her--and then hoisting everything to her
side, and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it
with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the
Pequod bore down in the leeward wake of Moby-Dick. At the well known,
methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was regularly announced
from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be reported as just gone
down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the deck, binnacle-watch
in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted hour expired, his
voice was heard.--"Whose is the doubloon now? D'ye see him?" and if the
reply was, No, sir! straightway he commanded them to lift him to his
perch. In this way the day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless;
anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.

As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men aloft,
or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a still
greater breadth--thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at
every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon
the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered stern.
At last he paused before it; and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh
troops of clouds will sometimes sail across, so over the old man's face
there now stole some such added gloom as this.

Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to
evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in
his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed--"The
thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!"

"What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man! did
I not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mech