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Many whalers already knew about Moby Dick . He was a huge sperm whale , the biggest that anybody had ever seen . His head and his back were as white as snow . He was fierce and clever , and he had broken many boats . Some sailors said that he could be in two oceans at the same time . Others said that he could never die . On his last voyage , Ahab met Moby Dick . The whale broke three of his boats . In a moment of mad anger , Ahab jumped at the whale with only a short knife in his hand . The great jaw swept round and cut off Ahab’s leg , as a farmer cuts grass . After that day , he believed that every evil thing in the world lived in that white whale . He wanted only one thing : to find Moby Dick and kill him . IX . The First Hunt On a whaling ship , the men take turns to watch for whales . They sit high up on the mast for two hours , and they look out across the sea in every direction . When I was up there , I often forgot the whales completely . The warm sun and the gentle movement of the ship made me dreamy . One quiet afternoon , Queequeg and I were weaving a mat on the deck . Suddenly Tashtego gave a wild cry from high up on the mast . “ There she blows ! There she blows ! There ! There ! ” Far away , we saw the white spouts of a group of whales . At once everybody was running . The boats were lowered into the sea . But at that moment , something happened that surprised us all . Five strange men came up from below . Nobody had ever seen them before . Their leader was a tall man with a dark face and a white turban . He wore a loose black Chinese jacket . His name was Fedallah . The five men had hidden on the ship since the beginning of the voyage . They were Ahab’s own crew for his own boat . So these were the dark figures that I saw in the mist on the morning when we sailed ! Elijah had known about them . Soon we were rowing hard after the whales . I was in Starbuck’s boat , with Queequeg as our harpooneer . As we rowed , the sky grew dark . A squall , a sudden short storm , was coming . The wind began to scream , and the waves grew higher and higher . “ Row , men , row ! ” whispered Starbuck . “ There is a whale just ahead ! ” Queequeg stood up in the front of the boat and threw his harpoon . At the same moment , the whale , the wind and the waves all hit us . Our boat filled with water , and we were all thrown into the sea . We managed to climb back in , but the boat was almost sinking . The whale was gone . The other boats and the ship were gone too . Night came , and the rain fell . We sat there in the dark boat , wet and cold . Queequeg held up a lantern on a long pole . It was a small , weak light in all that darkness , but he held it up all night . At dawn we heard a great noise , and out of the mist came the Pequod . She was sailing straight at us ! We jumped into the water just before she broke our boat to pieces . The sailors pulled us on board .
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