{"id":"01KJNXJVAVKEXW6CWC4V792WMD","cid":"bafkreicjvoi4jbozfm6wnwtmm635nc453aiti5pifyu56nwdslwhzsozfi","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1191819,"char_start":1183965,"chunk_index":167,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1964,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"under water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that\r\nmalicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted\r\nhimself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head\r\nlengthwise beneath the boat.\r\n\r\nThrough and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for\r\nan instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a\r\nbiting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his\r\nmouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into\r\nthe open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish\r\npearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab’s\r\nhead, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale\r\nnow shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With\r\nunastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the\r\ntiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other’s heads to gain the\r\nuttermost stern.\r\n\r\nAnd now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the\r\nwhale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his\r\nbody being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from\r\nthe bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while\r\nthe other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis\r\nimpossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with\r\nthis tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and\r\nhelpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized\r\nthe long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from\r\nits gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the\r\nfrail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an\r\nenormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in\r\ntwain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the\r\ntwo floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the\r\ncrew at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold\r\nfast to the oars to lash them across.\r\n\r\nAt that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first\r\nto perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a\r\nmovement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had\r\nmade one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only\r\nslipping further into the whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways as\r\nit slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him\r\nout of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the\r\nsea.\r\n\r\nRipplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little\r\ndistance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the\r\nbillows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body;\r\nso that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty or more feet\r\nout of the water—the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves,\r\ndazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray\r\nstill higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel\r\nbillows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to\r\noverleap its summit with their scud.\r\n\r\n*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its\r\ndesignation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary\r\nup-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called\r\npitchpoling, previously described. By this motion the whale must best\r\nand most comprehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him.\r\n\r\nBut soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly round\r\nand round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful\r\nwake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly\r\nassault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the\r\nblood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus’s elephants in the\r\nbook of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the\r\nwhale’s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he\r\ncould still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that;\r\nhelpless Ahab’s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least\r\nchance shock might burst. From the boat’s fragmentary stern, Fedallah\r\nincuriously and mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other\r\ndrifting end, could not succor him; more than enough was it for them to\r\nlook to themselves. For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s\r\naspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made,\r\nthat he seemed horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other\r\nboats, unharmed, still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into\r\nthe eddy to strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant\r\ndestruction of the jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that\r\ncase could they themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then,\r\nthey remained on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had\r\nnow become the old man’s head.\r\n\r\nMeantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship’s\r\nmast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene;\r\nand was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her!—“Sail on\r\nthe”—but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and\r\nwhelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing\r\nto rise on a towering crest, he shouted,—“Sail on the whale!—Drive him\r\noff!”\r\n\r\nThe Pequod’s prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle,\r\nshe effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly\r\nswam off, the boats flew to the rescue.\r\n\r\nDragged into Stubb’s boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white\r\nbrine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab’s bodily\r\nstrength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body’s doom: for a\r\ntime, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb’s boat, like one trodden\r\nunder foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from\r\nhim, as desolate sounds from out ravines.\r\n\r\nBut this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more\r\nabbreviate it. In an instant’s compass, great hearts sometimes condense\r\nto one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused\r\nthrough feebler men’s whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary\r\nin each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their life-time\r\naggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous\r\nintensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures\r\ncontain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.\r\n\r\n“The harpoon,” said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on\r\none bended arm—“is it safe?”\r\n\r\n“Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it,” said Stubb, showing it.\r\n\r\n“Lay it before me;—any missing men?”\r\n\r\n“One, two, three, four, five;—there were five oars, sir, and here are\r\nfive men.”\r\n\r\n“That’s good.—Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there!\r\nthere! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!—Hands off from me!\r\nThe eternal sap runs up in Ahab’s bones again! Set the sail; out oars;\r\nthe helm!”\r\n\r\nIt is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked\r\nup by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is\r\nthus continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now.\r\nBut the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the\r\nwhale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with\r\na velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these\r\ncircumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely\r\nprolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long\r\na period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing\r\nbarely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself,\r\nthen, as it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate\r\nmeans of overtaking the chase."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXM6EP73PJRV763QA81RVY","peer_label":"fedallah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM529XJRPQXV0DC58V32N","peer_label":"moby dick","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKYGCZNXREK07X11VQXHV","peer_label":"sperm whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_species","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXH2GMRN3K01DR56AKFQ","peer_label":"harpoon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMT9ZSVRY4X5K50WC9KT4","peer_label":"ahabs boat","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_boat","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMW23D7PCPDKGNN05DEKF","peer_label":"sea","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"body_of_water","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN7SMYQE24458B64ZWZ1Q","peer_label":"long bone moby dicks jaw","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_anatomy","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMW3AMJCC5Z0PM6SYGE7K","peer_label":"stubbs boat","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_boat","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMW3Y1WHDPG4SKTM8PF0C","peer_label":"other boats","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_boat","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN7W7QEBV8AQYB2B16SC9","peer_label":"pitchpoling","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_behavior","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMVJDP5S4B4K3F3Y9FF25","peer_label":"ahabs crew","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"crew","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXMY08GR8A9MKHQA7ED2Y1","peer_label":"two floating wrecks","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"boat_remnant","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXN7S8QZGHEMEC8XSK33C7","peer_label":"ships mast heads","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"entity","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:05:39.495Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.195Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:05:59.474Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}