Moby Dick

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depths.

For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The
ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering
mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana;
only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or
fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers
still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric
circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating
oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all
round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod
out of sight.

But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the
erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag,
which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying