{"id":"01KJNXJQYHG1X0Q2Q59SHTTQTW","cid":"bafkreibg57hd4wetnlf5pxchhq4vce42fo4ulw5vkzc2imzguy3avaddku","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":499128,"char_start":491156,"chunk_index":69,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1993,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"can’t ye? pull, won’t ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes\r\ndon’t ye pull?—pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out!\r\nHere!” whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; “every mother’s\r\nson of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth.\r\nThat’s it—that’s it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my\r\nsteel-bits. Start her—start her, my silver-spoons! Start her,\r\nmarling-spikes!”\r\n\r\nStubb’s exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had\r\nrather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in\r\ninculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this\r\nspecimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions\r\nwith his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief\r\npeculiarity. He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a\r\ntone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so\r\ncalculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear\r\nsuch queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling\r\nfor the mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy\r\nand indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so\r\nbroadly gaped—open-mouthed at times—that the mere sight of such a\r\nyawning commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted like a charm upon\r\nthe crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort of humorists,\r\nwhose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all\r\ninferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them.\r\n\r\nIn obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely\r\nacross Stubb’s bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were\r\npretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.\r\n\r\n“Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye\r\nplease!”\r\n\r\n“Halloa!” returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he\r\nspoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set\r\nlike a flint from Stubb’s.\r\n\r\n“What think ye of those yellow boys, sir!”\r\n\r\n“Smuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,\r\nboys!)” in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: “A sad\r\nbusiness, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind,\r\nMr. Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what\r\nwill. (Spring, my men, spring!) There’s hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr.\r\nStubb, and that’s what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm’s the\r\nplay! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand.”\r\n\r\n“Aye, aye, I thought as much,” soliloquized Stubb, when the boats\r\ndiverged, “as soon as I clapt eye on ’em, I thought so. Aye, and that’s\r\nwhat he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long\r\nsuspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale’s at the bottom\r\nof it. Well, well, so be it! Can’t be helped! All right! Give way, men!\r\nIt ain’t the White Whale to-day! Give way!”\r\n\r\nNow the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant\r\nas the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably\r\nawakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship’s\r\ncompany; but Archy’s fancied discovery having some time previous got\r\nabroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some\r\nsmall measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge\r\nof their wonder; and so what with all this and Stubb’s confident way of\r\naccounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from\r\nsuperstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room\r\nfor all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab’s precise agency in\r\nthe matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the\r\nmysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the\r\ndim Nantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the\r\nunaccountable Elijah.\r\n\r\nMeantime, Ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the\r\nfurthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a\r\ncircumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger\r\nyellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five\r\ntrip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which\r\nperiodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst\r\nboiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen\r\npulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and\r\ndisplayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the\r\ngunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery\r\nhorizon; while at the other end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a\r\nfencer’s, thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance\r\nany tendency to trip; Ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar\r\nas in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. All\r\nat once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained\r\nfixed, while the boat’s five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat\r\nand crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in\r\nthe rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily\r\ndown into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the\r\nmovement, though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it.\r\n\r\n“Every man look out along his oars!” cried Starbuck. “Thou, Queequeg,\r\nstand up!”\r\n\r\nNimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage\r\nstood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the\r\nspot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme\r\nstern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with\r\nthe gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing\r\nhimself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently\r\neyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.\r\n\r\nNot very far distant Flask’s boat was also lying breathlessly still;\r\nits commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a\r\nstout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above\r\nthe level of the stern platform. It is used for catching turns with the\r\nwhale line. Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a man’s hand,\r\nand standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched at the\r\nmast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks. But little\r\nKing-Post was small and short, and at the same time little King-Post\r\nwas full of a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead\r\nstand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.\r\n\r\n“I can’t see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to\r\nthat.”\r\n\r\nUpon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way,\r\nswiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty\r\nshoulders for a pedestal.\r\n\r\n“Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?”\r\n\r\n“That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you\r\nfifty feet taller.”\r\n\r\nWhereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the\r\nboat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to\r\nFlask’s foot, and then putting Flask’s hand on his hearse-plumed head\r\nand bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous\r\nfling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was\r\nFlask now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a\r\nbreastband to lean against and steady himself by.\r\n\r\nAt any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous\r\nhabitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect\r\nposture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously\r\nperverse and cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily\r\nperched upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the\r\nsight of little Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more\r\ncurious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy,\r\nunthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the\r\nsea harmoniously rolled his fine 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