While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and as the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank as he shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up.  Lashed round and round to the fish’s back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.

The harpoon dropped from his hand.

“Befooled, befooled!”—­drawing in a long lean breath—­“Aye, Parsee!  I see thee again.—­Aye, and thou goest before; and this, this then is the hearse that thou didst promise.  But I hold thee to the last letter of thy word.  Where is the second hearse?  Away, mates, to the ship! those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me; if not, Ahab is enough to die—­Down, men! the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon.  Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.—­ Where’s the whale? gone down again?”

But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,—­which thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the present her headway had been stopped.  He seemed swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight path in the sea.

“Oh!  Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist.  See!  Moby Dick seeks thee not.  It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!”

Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas.  And at last when Ahab was sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck’s face as he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval.  Glancing upwards he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats which had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in repairing them.  One after the other, through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances.  As he saw all this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving a nail into his heart.  But he rallied.  And now marking that the vane or flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.