{"id":"01KJNXJVAVS6DP33V25Q4G5K1E","cid":"bafkreia5i4anl6clhk5pabmwrelgdimoxhrg54chftaqrxh6qoebl2ivze","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1206038,"char_start":1198242,"chunk_index":169,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1949,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"render this acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the\r\nsea must be the whaleman’s allies; for of what present avail to the\r\nbecalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him he is\r\nexactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port? Inferable\r\nfrom these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching the\r\nchase of whales.\r\n\r\nThe ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a\r\ncannon-ball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level\r\nfield.\r\n\r\n“By salt and hemp!” cried Stubb, “but this swift motion of the deck\r\ncreeps up one’s legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two\r\nbrave fellows!—Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise,\r\non the sea,—for by live-oaks! my spine’s a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait\r\nthat leaves no dust behind!”\r\n\r\n“There she blows—she blows!—she blows!—right ahead!” was now the\r\nmast-head cry.\r\n\r\n“Aye, aye!” cried Stubb, “I knew it—ye can’t escape—blow on and split\r\nyour spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your\r\ntrump—blister your lungs!—Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller\r\nshuts his watergate upon the stream!”\r\n\r\nAnd Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies\r\nof the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine\r\nworked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might\r\nhave felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the\r\ngrowing awe of Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed,\r\nas timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand\r\nof Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the\r\nprevious day; the rack of the past night’s suspense; the fixed,\r\nunfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging\r\ntowards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled\r\nalong. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the\r\nvessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of\r\nthat unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race.\r\n\r\nThey were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all;\r\nthough it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple,\r\nand pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each\r\nother in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced\r\nand directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities\r\nof the crew, this man’s valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltiness,\r\nall varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that\r\nfatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.\r\n\r\nThe rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were\r\noutspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one\r\nhand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others,\r\nshading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking\r\nyards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for\r\ntheir fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to\r\nseek out the thing that might destroy them!\r\n\r\n“Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?” cried Ahab, when, after\r\nthe lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard.\r\n“Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd\r\njet that way, and then disappears.”\r\n\r\nIt was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some\r\nother thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for\r\nhardly had Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its\r\npin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the\r\nair vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant\r\nhalloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as—much nearer to the ship\r\nthan the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead—Moby Dick\r\nbodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not\r\nby the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the\r\nWhite Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous\r\nphenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the\r\nfurthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the\r\npure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows\r\nhis place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments,\r\nthe torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases,\r\nthis breaching is his act of defiance.\r\n\r\n“There she breaches! there she breaches!” was the cry, as in his\r\nimmeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to\r\nHeaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved\r\nagainst the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised,\r\nfor the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and\r\nstood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling\r\nintensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.\r\n\r\n“Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!” cried Ahab, “thy hour\r\nand thy harpoon are at hand!—Down! down all of ye, but one man at the\r\nfore. The boats!—stand by!”\r\n\r\nUnmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like\r\nshooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and\r\nhalyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped\r\nfrom his perch.\r\n\r\n“Lower away,” he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat—a spare one,\r\nrigged the afternoon previous. “Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine—keep\r\naway from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!”\r\n\r\nAs if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first\r\nassailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the\r\nthree crews. Ahab’s boat was central; and cheering his men, he told\r\nthem he would take the whale head-and-head,—that is, pull straight up\r\nto his forehead,—a not uncommon thing; for when within a certain limit,\r\nsuch a course excludes the coming onset from the whale’s sidelong\r\nvision. But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all three\r\nboats were plain as the ship’s three masts to his eye; the White Whale\r\nchurning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were,\r\nrushing among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered\r\nappalling battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him\r\nfrom every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank\r\nof which those boats were made. But skilfully manœuvred, incessantly\r\nwheeling like trained chargers in the field; the boats for a while\r\neluded him; though, at times, but by a plank’s breadth; while all the\r\ntime, Ahab’s unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds.\r\n\r\nBut at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed\r\nand recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three\r\nlines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves,\r\nwarped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him; though now\r\nfor a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more\r\ntremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab first paid out more\r\nline: and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again—hoping\r\nthat way to disencumber it of some snarls—when lo!—a sight more savage\r\nthan the embattled teeth of sharks!\r\n\r\nCaught and twisted—corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons\r\nand lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came flashing\r\nand dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab’s boat. Only one\r\nthing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached\r\nwithin—through—and then, without—the rays of steel; dragged in the line\r\nbeyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice sundering\r\nthe rope near the chocks—dropped the intercepted fagot of steel into\r\nthe sea; and was all fast again."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3DZQ5YTC2NQ9Q7VBWR","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM5CRPVA0155GAPFFCS8T","peer_label":"pequods crew","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"group","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKV7VCG1M1V2KKXZJD4A9","peer_label":"stubb","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW3Z6GAC3QZ1MZC1PX63","peer_label":"pequod","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaling_ship","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM529XJRPQXV0DC58V32N","peer_label":"moby dick","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKW8ZMHF9GR0N2T6VN53V","peer_label":"sperm whale","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"animal_species","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKVYKWFDKYWNFAY5N9KE5","peer_label":"starbuck","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXM6CV5BE5PG01N0MSHZ9Z","peer_label":"lance","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXKXH2GMRN3K01DR56AKFQ","peer_label":"harpoon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"weapon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQB6XMYGHM5S5XQ1QPCXZ","peer_label":"whaleman","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"profession","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ9MRBC1S4PXRCG58H8B3","peer_label":"ahabs boat","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whaleboat","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ6RHFMQ2BA562VFSJVE3","peer_label":"whale-spout","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"natural_phenomenon","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ365NJA95HDTB5W2QVBT","peer_label":"boat-knife","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"tool","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXRJ0JS2R5V5PPFFJFFJNT","peer_label":"breaching","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"whale_behavior","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXR7JM3NP7QP8FHGEH690B","peer_label":"whaling lines","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"equipment","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXS1QNMZ1JHSMWTD5T4ZMW","peer_label":"whale chase moby dick","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"event","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:06:58.449Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.195Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:07:34.960Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}