over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow
him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he
saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three
mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats
which had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in
repairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped,
he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves
on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he
heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving
a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or
flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had
just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer
and nails, and so nail it to the mast.

Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the resistance
to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some
latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White
Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly
nearing him once more; though indeed the whale's last start had not been
so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves the
unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the
boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades became
jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, at almost
every dip.

"Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull on!
'tis the better rest, the shark's jaw than the yielding water."

"But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"

"They will last long enough! pull on!--But who can tell"--he
muttered--"whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on
Ahab?--But pull on! Aye, all alive, now--we near him. The helm! take the
helm! let me pass,"--and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward
to the bows of the still flying boat.

At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along
with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its
advance--as the whale sometimes will--and Ahab was fairly within the
smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled
round his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when,
with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the
poise