Moby Dick

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its spasmodic motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached
to it--for they were slack--because some play to the tiller was
indispensable.

In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock
to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the
compasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the
Pequod's; at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice
the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards; it is
a sight that hardly anyone can behold without some sort of unwonted
emotion.

Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the
strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb--one engaged forward and the
other aft--the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails
were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like
the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when