Moby Dick

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all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing
that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman.
The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance
of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.

Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my
hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me;
with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty
fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the
capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue,
glistening in the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in
the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury
jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm
afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck by some
enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all at once
started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from all parts
of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from aloft, shouted