{"id":"01KFNR8B5NYVY20VSKN52PG6R1","cid":"bafkreigjt3glnj4ucg6742ors5y7doctgos2mhb6o5pq2r5lfx7fxxzsqm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":21783,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:06.423Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":21717,"text":"far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the\r\npresent her headway had been stopped. He seemed swimming with his\r\nutmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight\r\npath in the sea.\r\n\r\n“Oh! Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third\r\nday, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that\r\nmadly seekest him!”\r\n\r\nSetting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled\r\nto leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was sliding\r\nby the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck’s face as he\r\nleaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and\r\nfollow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards,\r\nhe saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three\r\nmast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats\r\nwhich had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in\r\nrepairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he\r\nsped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying\r\nthemselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all\r\nthis; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers\r\nseemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking\r\nthat the vane or flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to\r\nTashtego, who had just gained that perch, to descend again for another\r\nflag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.\r\n\r\nWhether fagged by the three days’ running chase, and the resistance to\r\nhis swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some\r\nlatent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White\r\nWhale’s way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly\r\nnearing him once more; though indeed the whale’s last start had not\r\nbeen so long a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves\r\nthe unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to\r\nthe boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades\r\nbecame jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, at\r\nalmost every dip.\r\n\r\n“Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull\r\non! ’tis the better rest, the shark’s jaw than the yielding water.”\r\n\r\n“But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!”\r\n\r\n“They will last long enough! pull on!—But who can tell”—he\r\nmuttered—“whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on\r\nAhab?—But pull on! Aye, all alive, now—we near him. The helm! take the\r\nhelm! let me pass,”—and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward\r\nto the bows of the still flying boat.\r\n\r\nAt length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with\r\nthe White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its\r\nadvance—as the whale sometimes will—and Ahab was fairly within the\r\nsmoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled\r\nround his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when,\r\nwith body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the\r\npoise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the\r\nhated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked\r\ninto a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his\r\nnigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so\r\nsuddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated\r\npart of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have\r\nbeen tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen—who foreknew\r\nnot the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for\r\nits effects—these were flung out; but so fell, that, in an instant two\r\nof them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a\r\ncombing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man\r\nhelplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR85GMZ5CEWAKR35G2W28B","peer_label":"135","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR85GMZ5CEWAKR35G2W28B","peer_label":"135","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR8CGRVZ1205K3NYYSTCN5","peer_label":"Chunk 5","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KFNR8B9VFHXE6WDTBDE2XT0E","peer_label":"Chunk 3","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:06.771Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:19.125Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}