volved boats of Stubb and
Flask towards his flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on
a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in
a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of
the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly
stirred bowl of punch.

While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after
the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while
aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching his
legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was lustily
singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old man's
line--now parting--admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to
rescue whom he could;--in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand
concreted perils,--Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards
Heaven by invisible wires,--as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly
from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its
bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell
again--gunwale downwards--and Ahab and his men struggled out from under
it, like seals from a sea-side cave.

The first uprising momentum of the whale--modifying its direction as
he struck the surface--involuntarily launched him along it, to a little
distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his
back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from
side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip
or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and
came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work
for that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the
ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his
leeward way at a traveller's methodic pace.

As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again
came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at, and
safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and
ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable
intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these were there;
but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen any one. As
with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to
his boat's broke