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Well it was that we got out of her way in time. One blow from those tremendous flukes would have destroyed us. Loudly we shouted as the monster lay an inanimate mass on the surface of the deep. Then we looked about us. We had approached close to the island, but darkness was settling down over the face of the waters. The ship was not to be seen. Clouds were gathering thickly in the sky.
Often and often, out here at such a time as this, have I tried to fancy myself a herring caught by the gills in the net down below, instead of the fisherman in the boat above going to haul him out." "And did you succeed?" "Well, I fancy I came to understand as much of him as he does himself. It's a merry enough life down there. The flukes plaice, you call them, my lady bother me, I confess.
At length, crack went the glass sides of the great cases, and whale and alligators rolled out on the floor with the rushing and steaming water. The whale died easily, having been pretty well used up before. A few great gasps and a convulsive flap or two of his mighty flukes were his expiring spasm.
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.
The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign parts. "Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; "him fast! him fast! Who line him! Who struck? Two whale; one big, one little!" "What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck. "Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing down.
Now we were close upon him; now, in obedience to the steersman, the boat sheered out a bit, and we were abreast of his labouring flukes; now the mate hurls his quivering lance with such hearty good-will that every inch of its slender shaft disappears within the huge body. "Layoff! Off with her, Louey!" screamed the mate; and she gave a wide sheer away from the whale, not a second too soon.
Presently the quarter-boat came alongside with the stream-anchor hanging over her stern; and then the reason for its coming home became evident we had hove upon it until one of the flukes had been torn off. By the time that the stream-anchor was out of the boat the bower was hanging at the bows ready for slinging, and it was then run away by the two boats directly to windward.
In an instant he may sink bodily from sight; or, throwing his flukes high in air, "sound," to be seen no more; or, casting himself bodily on the boat, blot it out of existence; or, taking it in his jaws, carry it down with him.
Reckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale's tail to begin at that point of the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises upon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in thickness.
It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and start my soul-bolts, but I'll I'll yes, I'll swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of a wooden gun a straight wake with ye!"
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