Moby Dick

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line--now parting--admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to
rescue whom he could;--in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand
concreted perils,--Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards
Heaven by invisible wires,--as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly
from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its
bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell
again--gunwale downwards--and Ahab and his men struggled out from under
it, like seals from a sea-side cave.

The first uprising momentum of the whale--modifying its direction as
he struck the surface--involuntarily launched him along it, to a little
distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his
back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from
side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip
or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and
came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work
for that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the