CHAPTER 131

  The Pequod Meets The Delight

  The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by;

the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most

miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all

eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some

whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine

feet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.

  Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs,

and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat;

but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through

the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.

  "Hast seen the White Whale?"

  "Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and

with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.

  "Hast killed him?"

  "The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that," answered the

other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose

gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.

  "Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch,

Ahab held it out, exclaiming- "Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand

I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are

these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place

behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"

  "Then God keep thee, old man- see'st thou that"- pointing to the

hammock- "I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only

yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest

were buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb." Then

turning to his crew- "Are ye ready there? place the plank then on

the rail, and lift the body; so, then- Oh! God"- advancing towards the

hammock with uplifted hands- "may the resurrection and the life-"

  "Brace forward! Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men.

  But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the

sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea;

not so quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have

sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.

  As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange

life-buoy hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief.

  "Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!" cried a foreboding voice in her

wake. "In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn

us your taffrail to show us your coffin!"