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Updated: June 27, 2025
The mate, between the knight-heads, exhausted all his official rhetoric in calls of ``Heave with a will! ``Heave hearty, men! heave hearty! ``Heave, and raise the dead! ``Heave, and away! &c., &c.; but it would not do. Nobody broke his back or his handspike by his efforts.
Should he be able to weather the point ahead, that which terminated at the mouth of the passage that led within the Hermits, it was now certain it could be done only by going fearfully near the rocks. Roswell Gardiner took his station between the knight-heads, beckoning to Stimson to come near him. At the same time, Hazard himself went to the helm.
There was a great spring in all her decks, that is to say, she ran with a curve forward and aft. On her forecastle another small deck ran from the knight-heads, which was called the top-gallant forecastle. Her quarter-deck was broken with a poop, which rose high out of the water.
Looking around, the other found a handspike, and passing swiftly up the heel of the bowsprit, he stood between the knight-heads. Here he bent forward, and looked intently towards the lines of chains which lay over the bulwarks, as bow-fasts. Of these chains the parts led quite near each other, in parallel lines, and as the ship's moorings were taut, they were hanging in merely a slight curve.
The keel was just four-and-twenty feet long, the distance between the knight-heads and the taffrail being six feet greater; the beam, from outside to outside, was nine feet, and the hold might be computed at five feet in depth. This gave something like a measurement of eleven tons; the pinnace having been intended for a craft a trifle smaller than this.
In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon her long, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient steed. Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod's tumultuous way, and Ahab's also, as he went lurching along the deck.
Karl Ericksen, called down from the maintop where his range of view had become limited through the increasing darkness and snowstorm, was placed between the knight-heads; a man on each bow; Frank Harness on the fore scuttle; Mr McCarthy and Adams on the port and starboard quarters; and Ben Boltrope at the wheel Captain Dinks being here, there, and everywhere to see that everybody was on the qui vive, even ascending the mizzen rigging sometimes into the top, to have an outlook from there and try whether his eyes could pierce the misty vapour that hung over the sea by dint of looking down into it.
The captain, darting on deck from the cabin, bawled lustily for his spy-glass; the mate in still louder accents hailed the mast-head with a tremendous “Where-away?” The black cook thrust his woolly head from the galley, and Boatswain, the dog, leaped up between the knight-heads, and barked most furiously. Land ho! Ay, there it was.
He listened, and again distinctly heard the cry, which seemed to come from the water under the bows. Supposing it might proceed from some person who had fallen overboard and wanted help, he went forward to the knight-heads, and called out, "Who's there?" A voice from below the bowsprit faintly replied, "Shipmate, for God's sake bear a hand, and give me help.
He went deliberately into the saloon and removed from the sideboard two big heavy, silver-plated lamps, which he carried to the fore-end of the ship and stood symmetrically on the knight-heads. This, I must explain, means that he took them away as far as possible from the place where they belonged. These were the deeds of darkness.
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