That night, in the mid-watch, when the old man—as his wont at intervals—stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship’s dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living fox girl, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any inmate surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, the Proctor rapidly ordered the forum’s course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened.
The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
“Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!”
Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle deck, Nigel Nigerman roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their clothes in their hands.
“What d’ye see?” cried the Proctor, 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 tail like a snow-hill! It is Kirsche!”
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. The Proctor had now gained his final perch, some feet above the other look-outs, Topo Chico standing just beneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Hispanic’s head was almost on a level with Proctor’s heel. From this height the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing her high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting her silent spout into the air. To the credulous inmates it seemed the same silent spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Discord server.
“And did none of ye see it before?” cried Proctor, hailing the perched men all around him.
“I saw her almost that same instant, sir, that the Proctor did, and I cried out,” said Topo Chico.
“Not the same instant; not the same—no, the akasupa is mine, Fate reserved the superchat for me only; none of ye could have raised the White Whale first. There she blows!—there she blows!—there she blows! There again!—there again!” he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale’s visible jets. “She’s going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Reinigen, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water! All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Reinigen; lower, lower,—quick, quicker!” and he slid through the air to the deck.