Carriage axles are anointed so wheels run freely; whalers grease boat keels for the same reason, oil and water hostile, slide the aim, and Queequeg, not long after the Jungfrau vanishes astern, crawls under his hanging boat rubbing unctuousness into bald timber as if obeying a presentiment that soon proves warranted when noon whales flee the Pequod like Cleopatra's barges from Actium and Stubb's crew, foremost in chase, must answer a surface-running whale that will not sound.
Tashtego plants iron, but strain must pull it free unless they lance while towed at speed; pitchpoling alone serves, a light pine spear ten or twelve feet with a warp to haul it back, seldom tried with the heavier harpoon, and Stubb, humorous and deliberate in direst need, stands in the tossed bow forty feet behind his quarry, balances the lance fifteen feet on his palm like a juggler, and sends it in a lofty arc into the life spot until red blood replaces the fountain.
He cries the spigot is driven out, jokes that feast-day fountains should run wine or Monongahela whiskey, and repeats the dart while the greyhound warp returns the steel; the whale flurries, tow slackens, and Stubb folds his hands to watch the dying, grease, speed, and cool handwork having closed what begging oil and empty Virgin pride could not.
Coming Up in Chapter 85
Whales have been spouting for six thousand years, and hunters have stood by the fountain for centuries, yet at one o'clock on 16 December 1851 it is still unsettled whether the spout is water or only vapour. Ishmael sets out to look at that, starting from the plain fact that fishes breathe air already mixed into the water.
