The Pequod Meets The Virgin — Moby-Dick

The predestinated day brings the Jungfrau of Bremen, Derick De Deer her master, rounding under eager colours while Dutch and German whalers, once lords of the fishery, now appear only at wide intervals; Derick rows over standing in the bows and waving what Starbuck calls impossible, Stubb a coffee-pot, Flask correctly a lamp-feeder and oil-can, for an oil-ship begging oil on the whale-ground inverts the proverb about coals to Newcastle yet happens when a _clean_ vessel, empty of cargo, lives up to her Virgin name. Ahab breaks lingo about the White Whale and finds Derick ignorant; oil changes hands, Derick leaves, and both mast-heads instantly raise whales while he slews his boat back without reclaiming tin or feeder, four German keels joining a pod of eight running abreast before the wind like harnessed spans while far astern a huge humped bull, yellow-crusted and one-finned, labours with choking spout and stomach-turning wake, more quarry than racer yet nearest and largest, so every boat from both ships converges on his pity.

Derick's start and mockery with the very poor-box Starbuck filled enrage the mates; he hurls lamp-feeder and oil-can at rivals to slow them until a fouled crab oar nearly capsizes him and the Pequod's three boats range alongside in chivalrous fury, the sick whale yawing like a clipped bird that cannot cry while Derick's harpooneer rears for a long dart and Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo spring in a diagonal row, their irons passing over the German's head to strike as one, spilling Derick into the sea and towing the Pequod into foam at a run the bull cannot long sustain.

He sounds with almost no rope visible, Leviathan writhing in silent blue depth while three loggerheads groan and Job's boasting about barbed irons turns ironic; he rises spent, non-valvular blood pouring from harpoon wounds under ocean pressure, blind bulbous sockets protruding where eyes were, and still must die to light weddings and churches until Flask pricks an ulcer against Starbuck's avast and the maddened bull capsizes Flask's boat in a gory charge, rolls like a waning world, and expires while Starbuck rigs lines to keep the sinking carcase from losing its treasures unrifled.

Inside the flank they find a corroded harpoon and a stone lance-head firm in healed flesh, riddle upon riddle, until the body drags the Pequod aslant like walking a roof and Queequeg's hatchet snaps the fluke-chains so the ship rights and the corpse drops; then mast-heads report the Virgin lowering again on a Fin-Back spout, uncapturable cousin to the sperm whale's fountain, and Derick sails hope after hope while Ishmael closes: many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks.