English Banana Extra!: June 2008 Archives

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on June 27, 2008 7:42 PM | Permalink

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Moby-Dick, or The Whale - by Herman Melville

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on June 19, 2008 8:32 AM | Permalink

Sperm whale attacks fishermen kills 1

The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as--much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead--Moby Dick bodily burst into view!

For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.

Jonathan Bird's Blue World #3: Sperm Whales

"There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to Heaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and stood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.

"Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand!--Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore. The boats!--stand by!" Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his perch. "Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat--a spare one, rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine--keep away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!" As if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and was now coming for the three crews...