It was thus
now. But the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of
the whale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming
with a velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these
circumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely
prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long
a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing
barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself,
then, as it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate
means of overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for
her, and were soon swayed up to their cranes--the two parts of the
wrecked boat having been previously secured by her--and then hoisting
everything to her side, and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways
outstretching it with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an
albatross; the _Pequod_ bore down in the leeward wake of Moby Dick. At
the well known, methodic intervals, the whale's glittering spout was
regularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be
reported as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing
the deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the
allotted hour expired, his voice was heard.
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