drifting end, could not succor him; more than enough was it to look to themselves.  For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale’s aspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made, that he seemed horizontally swooping upon them.  And though the other boats unharmed, still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into the eddy to strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction of the jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that case could they themselves hope to escape.  With straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old man’s head.

Meantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship’s mast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene; and was now so nigh, that Ahab in the water hailed her:—­“Sail on the”—­but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and whelmed him for the time.  But struggling out of it again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,—­“Sail on the whale!—­Drive him off!”

The Pequod’s prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle, she effectually parted the whale from his victim.  As he suddenly swam off, the boats flew to the rescue.

Dragged into Stubb’s boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab’s bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body’s doom:  for a long time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb’s boat, like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants.  Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines.

But this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more abbreviate it.  In an instant’s compass, great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler men’s whole lives.  And so, such hearts, though summary in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous intensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures contain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.

“The harpoon,” said Ahab, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on one bended arm—­“is it safe!”

“Aye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it,” said Stubb, showing it.

“Lay it before me;—­any missing men!”

“One, two, three, four, five;—­there were five oars, sir, and here are five men.”

“That’s good.—­Help me, man; I wish to stand.  So, so, I see him! there! there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!—­Hands off from me!  The eternal sap runs up in Ahab’s bones again!  Set the sail; out oars; the helm!”