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Mary! boy! boy! boy! But if I wake thee not to death, old man, who can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's body this day week may sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall I? The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails are reefed and set! she heads her course." "Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!"
"Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who, with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. "Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick but it was not Moby Dick that took off thy leg?"
And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming malice.
It is well to remember that once at least in his life he had loved deeply. The Over-Lord brought Murphy to the door, and arranged matters with Martha Moby, just as he had often done with others in the same way. The day had been wet; the lane on to which the garden-gate opened was muddy; the dog had dirty feet. "You'll take care of him, I know.
He replied that 'Moby Dick' was responsible for his three years of life before the mast when a lad, and added that while 'gamming' on board another vessel he had once fallen in with a member of the boat's crew which rescued Melville from his friendly imprisonment among the Typees. While at Pittsfield, besides his own family, Mr. Melville's mother and sisters resided with him.
Yet, when the time came, what was there that he could say to her? The storm had blown itself out and dawn returned before he slept. With morning Bendigo proved grumpy and desirous to be left alone. He was evidently much perturbed and shut himself into the tower room with his pipe and "Moby Dick." He only cared to see Jenny, who spent some time with him.
Time itself now held long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it. "Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On deck there! brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye.
It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported to have encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing great mischief to his assailants, has completely escaped them; to some minds it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in question must have been no other than Moby Dick.
"Moby Dick" also afforded him that ceaseless companionship with great waters which was essential to content. "Well," he said to Doria, "get you gone. Look round as usual to see that all's snug aloft and below; then turn in. Leave only the light in the hall and the front door on the latch. Did you mark if he had a watch to know the hour?" "He had no watch, but Mrs.
But at length, such calamities did ensue in these assaults not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or devouring amputations but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick; those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story of the White Whale had eventually come.
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