Moby Dick

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it with the Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor,
whales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.

It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson
fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun
and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such
plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that
it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of
the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had
gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.

Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned
off from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the now
tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales
dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring--that strange
spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a
wondrousness unknown before.