Chapter 133: The Chase—First Day
Ahab can sense by the smell of a whale in the air that
Moby Dick is near. Climbing up to the main royal-mast, Ahab spots
Moby Dick and earns himself the doubloon. All of the boats set off
in chase of the whale. When Moby Dick finally surfaces, he does
so directly beneath Ahab’s boat, destroying it and casting its crew
into the water. The whale threatens the men, but the Pequod, with
Starbuck at the helm, drives it away, and the men are rescued by
the other boats. The whale then moves away from the ship at a rapid
rate, and the boats return to the ship. The men keep watch for Moby
Dick, despite the misgivings of Starbuck and others.
Chapter 134: The Chase—Second Day
Ishmael notes that it is not unprecedented for whalers
to give extended pursuit to a particular whale. Ahab, despite the
previous day’s loss of the boat, is intent on the chase. They do
sight Moby Dick again, and the crewmen, in awe of Ahab’s wild power
and caught up in the thrill, lower three boats. Starbuck again remains
on board the Pequod. Ahab tries to attack Moby
Dick head on this time, but again the whale is triumphant. Despite
the harpoons in his side, he destroys the boats carrying Flask and
Stubb by dashing them against one another. He also nearly kills
Ahab’s crew with the tangle of harpoons and lances caught in the
line coming from his side. Ahab manages to cut and then reattach
the line, removing the cluster of weapons.
Moby Dick then capsizes Ahab’s boat. Ahab’s whale-bone
leg is snapped off in the mishap, and Ahab curses his body’s weakness. Upon
returning to the Pequod, Ahab finds out that Fedallah has drowned,
dragged down by Ahab’s own line, fulfilling one element of Fedallah’s
prophecy concerning Ahab’s death—that Ahab would die after Fedallah.
Starbuck begs Ahab to desist, but Ahab, convinced that he is only
the “Fates’ lieutenant,” responds that he must continue to pursue
the whale. The carpenter hastily makes Ahab a new leg from the remnants
of his harpoon boat.
Chapter 135: The Chase—Third Day
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying
but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s
heart I stab at thee.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
The crew seeks the White Whale for a third time but sees
nothing until Ahab realizes, “Aye, he’s chasing me now; not I, him—that’s bad.”
They turn the ship around completely, and Ahab mounts the masthead
himself. He sights the spout and comes back down to the deck again.
As he gets into his boat and leaves Starbuck in charge, the two
men exchange a poignant moment in which Ahab asks to shake hands
with his first mate and the first mate tries to tell him not to
go. Sharks bite at the oars as the boats pull away. Starbuck laments
Ahab’s certain doom. Ahab sees Moby Dick breach. The whale damages
the other two boats, but Ahab’s remains intact. Ahab sees Fedallah’s
corpse strapped to the whale by turns of rope and realizes that
he is seeing the first hearse that Fedallah had predicted, in the
sense that a hearse is a vehicle—here, the whale—that carries a
corpse.
The whale goes down again, and Ahab rows close to the
ship. He tells Tashtego to find another flag and nail it to the
main masthead, as the Pequod’s flag has somehow been removed from
its usual spot. The boats sight the Moby Dick again and go after
him. Moby Dick turns around and heads for the Pequod at full speed.
He smashes the ship, which goes down without its captain. The ship,
Ahab realizes, is the second hearse of Fedallah’s prophecy, since
it entombs its crew in “American” wood. Impassioned, Ahab
is now determined to strike at Moby Dick with all of his power.
After darting the whale, Ahab is caught around the neck by the flying
line and dragged under the sea—the final element of Fedallah’s prophesy.
Tashtego, meanwhile, still tries to nail the flag to the ship’s
spar as it goes down. He catches a sky-hawk in mid-hammer, and the
screaming bird, folded in the flag, goes down with everything else.
The vortex from the sinking Pequod pulls the remaining harpoon boats
and crew down with it.
Epilogue
Ishmael is the only survivor of the Pequod’s encounter
with Moby Dick. He escapes only because he had been thrown clear
of the area in the wreck of Ahab’s harpoon boat. Queequeg’s coffin
bobs up and becomes Ishmael’s life buoy. A day after the wreck,
the Rachel saves Ishmael as she continues to search for her own
lost crew.
