[1] So, in a gale, the but half
baffled Channel billows only recoil from the base of the Eddy-stone,
triumphantly to overleap its summit with their scud.
But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick swam swiftly round
and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful
wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly
assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the
blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the
book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the
whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,--though he
could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that;
helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least
chance shock might burst. From the boat's fragmentary stern, Fedallah
incuriously and mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other
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.
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