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-deckat 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 throughthe 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 will ever will do that,"answered the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock onthe deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busyin sewing together.
"Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch,Ahab held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye, Nantucketer; here in thishand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightningare these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot placebehind 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--"Areye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and liftthe body; so, then--Oh! God"--advancing towards the hammockwith 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 escapethe 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 havesprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.
As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoyhanging 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 usyour taffrail to show us your coffin!"