It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight.  The whale was now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright.  Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin.  So have I seen a bird with clipped wing, making affrighted broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks.  But the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.

Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Pequod’s boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.

But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all three tigers—­Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo—­instinctively sprang to their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three Nantucket irons entered the whale.  Blinding vapors of foam and white-fire!  The three boats, in the first fury of the whale’s headlong rush, bumped the German’s aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels.

“Don’t be afraid, my butter-boxes,” cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon them as he shot by; “ye’ll be picked up presently—­ all right—­I saw some sharks astern—­St. Bernard’s dogs, you know—­ relieve distressed travellers.  Hurrah! this is the way to sail now.  Every keel a sunbeam!  Hurrah!—­Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a mad cougar!  This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a tilbury on a plain—­ makes the wheelspokes fly, boys, when you fasten to him that way; and there’s danger of being pitched out too, when you strike a hill.  Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he’s going to Davy Jones—­all a rush down an endless inclined plane!  Hurrah! this whale carries the everlasting mail!”

But the monster’s run was a brief one.  Giving a sudden gasp, he tumultuously sounded.  With a grating rush, the three lines flew round the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them; while so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at last—­owing to the perpendicular strain