Moby Dick

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but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow;
but we didn't know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled on the
line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other whale's;
that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters stood, and
what a noble great whale it was--the noblest and biggest I ever saw,
sir, in my life--I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling rage
he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or
the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat's
crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped
into my first mate's boat--Mr. Mounttop's here (by the way,
Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the captain);--as I was saying, I jumped
into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was gunwale and gunwale
with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old
great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir--hearts and souls
alive, man--the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both
eyes out--all befogged and bedeadened with black foam--the whale's tail
looming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble