Moby Dick: The Third Day

The third morning came fair and fresh, and every mast of the Pequod was crowded with lookouts, but for a long time there was no sign of Moby Dick.Ahab, staring at the empty sea, decided that he had sailed past the whale in the night and that Moby Dick was now the one chasing him, so he turned the ship around and had himself hauled up the mast once more.At last he saw the white whale’s spout far off, and from all three mastheads a great cry went up.

Before he left the ship, Ahab told his first mate, Starbuck, that some ships sail from port and are never seen again, and that he felt old, so he asked to shake his hand.Starbuck, in tears, begged him not to go, but Ahab pushed his arm away and shouted, “Lower away!”As the boat pulled away, sharks rose from the dark water and snapped at its oars, and they followed Ahab’s boat and none of the others.

Suddenly the water swelled and trembled, and Moby Dick burst up from the deep, hung for a moment in the misty air, and fell back into the sea with a crash.The whale, maddened by the harpoons still lodged in his body, smashed two of the boats with his tail, and then the men saw, tied to his back by the tangled lines, the body of the Parsee, the strange prophet who had been lost the day before.Ahab remembered that the Parsee had promised him two hearses, one not made by human hands and one built of American wood, and that only rope could kill him, and now he believed he had seen the first hearse.

Ahab sent the broken boats back to the ship and went on alone after the whale, though Starbuck cried out that it was Ahab who chased Moby Dick and not the other way around.The sharks kept biting the oars until the blades were small and jagged, but Ahab told the rowers to ignore them and pull harder, and when the boat came alongside the whale, he threw his harpoon with all his strength.The whale twisted so hard that three rowers were thrown into the sea, two of whom climbed back aboard, and when Ahab ordered the rope hauled in, the line snapped in the air.

Then the whale turned, saw the black hull of the Pequod as if it were the cause of all his pain, and rushed at the ship and drove his great white forehead into her side.The ship began to sink at once, the sailors stood frozen with hammers and harpoons in their hands, and Ahab shouted from his boat that this was the second hearse, since its wood could only be American.Cut off from his ship, Ahab made a last speech to the whale, swore to fight him to his last breath, and flung his harpoon, and the flying line caught him around the neck and swept him from the boat before his crew knew he was gone, just as the Parsee had foretold.

The rowers looked for the ship and saw only her highest masts above the water, where the harpooneers still sat at their lookouts, and then a whirlpool drew boat, oars and men round and round and down out of sight.At the last moment Tashtego, nailing the red flag to the sinking mast, caught a sky-hawk’s wing under his hammer, so the bird went down with the ship, and the sea closed over the place and rolled on as it had rolled for five thousand years.