The Pequod Meets the Delight - Jamie Lenman

The intense Pequod sailed on;

the rolling waves and days went by;

the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung;

and another ship, most miserably

misnamed the Delight, was descried.

As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon

her broad beams, called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the

quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet;

serving to carry the spare,

unrigged, or disabled boats

Upon the stranger’s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs,

and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat;

but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled,

half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse

«Hast seen the White Whale?»

«Look!»

replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail;

and with his

trumpet he pointed to the wreck

«Hast killed him?»

«The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that,» answered the other,

sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered sides some

noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together

«Not forged!»

and snatching Perth’s levelled iron from the crotch,

Ahab held it out, exclaiming--«Look ye, Nantucketer;

here in this hand I hold

his death!

Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs;

and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin,

where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!»

«Then God keep thee, old man--see'st thou that"--pointing to the hammock--»

I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only yesterday;

but were dead ere night.

Only THAT one I bury;

the rest were buried before

they died;

you sail upon their tomb." Then turning to his crew--"

Are ye ready there?

place the plank then on the rail, and lift the body;

so,

then--Oh!

God"--advancing towards the hammock with uplifted hands--"

may the resurrection and the life--"

«Brace forward!

Up helm!»

cried Ahab like lightning to his men.

But the

suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound of the splash

that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea;

not so quick, indeed,

but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with their

ghostly baptism

As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy hanging at

the Pequod’s stern came into conspicuous relief

«Ha!

yonder!

look yonder, men!»

cried a foreboding voice in her wake.

«In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial;

ye but turn us your

taffrail to show us your coffin!»