"What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.
"Nothing, nothing, sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply.
"T'gallant sails!--stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!"
All sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for
swaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were
hoisting him thither, when, while but two-thirds of the way aloft, and
while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the
main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the
air, "There she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It
is Moby Dick!"
Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three
look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous
whale they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final
perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just
beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian's
head was almost on a level with Ahab's heel. From this height the
whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea
revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent
spout into the air.
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