Malacca's peninsula and the island rampart from Sumatra to Timor pierce the Indian Ocean with sally-ports, Sunda chief among them, Java Head buttressing the gate through which China-bound sail and sperm whales pass while Malays in proas demand tribute where fortresses do not, and Ahab, purposing Sunda into the Javan sea and north toward Japan before the Pacific line and Moby Dick, touches no land because the circus-running sun and the whale-ship's bottled Nantucket lake make her an ark crewed by men who might answer a second flood with a shrug.
Near Java Head cinnamon air yields no spout until half the horizon blooms a semicircle of forward-slanting sperm jets like a metropolis of chimneys, the herd hurrying the strait as armies rush a defile; stunsails piled, the Pequod drives them until Tashtego finds a rear crescent of hovering vapour and Ahab, pivoting with glass, cries Malays astern, buckets on the sails, brow gnawed gaunt as black sand while he chases leviathans ahead and pirates behind through the gate of his vengeance.
Past Cockatoo Point the harpooneers grieve the whales' lead more than the escaped proas; boats spring as the herd gallies into panic circles, Queequeg's iron dragging them into the shoal's frantic ice-field while Starbuck lances aside blockers and drugged harpoons fetter stragglers until a drugg tears a seat and shirts plug the leaks, slipping them into the enchanted sleek at the herd's heart where tame cows nuzzle the gunwale and underwater mothers nurse fourteen-foot infants still tethered by cords mistaken for harpoon lines, Ishmael bathing in mute calm while outer rings still rage.
Peace shatters when a hamstrung whale tows a loose cutting-spade through the mass, flailing kin to death; the lake heaves, Starbuck seizes the helm, oars scrape between black Dardanelles walls, Queequeg loses his hat to a fluke-eddy, the host flees, Flask waifs one kill, and of all the drugged only one is kept, proving the fishery proverb that more whales mean less fish while Moby Dick might have swum that coronation white-elephant procession unseen, and the Pequod's nets close on only one body from a city of spouts.
Coming Up in Chapter 88
Great herds are not the only gatherings. Smaller bands of twenty to fifty sperm whales are called schools, and they come in two kinds: almost all females, or none but young bulls. A full-grown male, not yet old, attends the females and on any alarm drops to the rear to cover their flight.
