“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered again, just, it seemed, as he would have done had I ordered him to fasten to the moon, supposing that it had been shining to seaward. However, the five boats were alongside and hoisted up in no time, and Parker, as soon as he was up to the dodge, wild as it seemed, did the thing in true whaleman’s style, bending triple plies of the line to the hawser, driving both irons socket up in the whale’s back, as he lay like a log on the sea. For one single instant the enormous animal remained motionless, while the boat backed off from his flukes; then I saw his mighty, flexible tail, with its million stripes of freckled gray, heave up until his whole back was plainly to be seen to the dorsal fin, when down it came like a dark mass of iron, driving a cloud of spray in the air, and off he headed to sea, the water being too shallow for him to sound. The hawser stood the surge, and away the old ship went to her tug, the second mate giving a chase, while the men echoed back the yells of the disappointed Arabs amid the crack of match-locks and the bellowing thunder of the cannon. We soon had Parker’s boat towing astern, and Tom, if any thing, increased his speed, stretching the hawser—which, like the rest of her gear, was bran new that voyage, as _taut_ as a harp-string. Every time he raised the edge of his flukes for a downward stroke of his tail, the men cheered; in fact, the fellows danced about the deck like wild men round a war-post, or negroes under a tamarind-tree; it was no manner of use to try to restrain them; while the poor devils of Arabs, with the black at their head, stood looking their last—with Allah’s name on their lips—at castle, rock and tower. However, the thought of what was lying in the cabins seemed to strike the crew all at once; and then, as they ceased capering and pitching their hats at each other, fixing their eyes upon me as one man’s, the old, desolate feelings came back to my heart all the heavier for the contrast.