Moby Dick

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across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is
sometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful
and alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or
maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled
cutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again.
A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in this part, but not
effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the boat, carrying along
with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony of
the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the lone
mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay
wherever he went.

But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle
enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to
inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the
intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we perceived that
by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this whale had