Chapter 11 Sightings.
One moonlit night off the coast of Portugal, we spotted a line of bubbles along the water.
This was a sign that there was a whale, or many whales, just below the surface.
Whales are mammals, and they breathe air.
The bubbles were a sign that they were breathing out.
The man in the masthead spotted them first.
He called out, "'There she blows!'
The men, once again, ran into position.
We were too late, though.
By the time Captain Ahab made it to the rail of the Pequod, the whale was gone.
We all went back to bed, disappointed.
Only a few nights later, the bubbles appeared along the surface again.
There was a spout of water as a whale reached the surface and exhaled air through its blowhole.
A fountain of water shot into the sky.
Again, the watchman in the masthead yelled, "'Dar she blows!'
We all moved as quickly as we could.
Once again, just as we were ready to go after it, the whale disappeared.
Some men insisted these sightings were the same whale.
They insisted it was none other than Moby Dick.
Some even believed the whale was taunting us.
They believed he was challenging us to a fight.
Captain Ahab, of course, was among this group.
He believed the white whale was teasing him.
We could often hear him mutter under his breath.
Starbuck was starting to believe that the captain was going insane.
He was too focused on the white whale.
He spoke of nothing else.
Ahab did not talk about his wife and child at home.
He did not talk about how many whales they had caught on the voyage.
He was not concerned about how much oil they would bring home.
He only cared about finding Moby Dick.
For Captain Ahab, there was nothing else.
Whenever we caught up with another ship, Ahab yelled across to them, Have you seen the white whale?
If there were no sightings, he would become angry.
He would pace back and forth across his deck for hours at a time.
He would mutter to himself and occasionally wave his fist in the air.
If there was a sighting, Ahab became very excited.
He studied his maps closely, plotting exactly where he should go next.
He constantly looked for food that a whale would eat.
He knew that Moby Dick would follow the same path.
It was our lucky day when we sailed into a mass of Brit.
Brit is the name we sailors use to describe a cloudy group of tiny fish.
This is something that whales feed on.
It was a good sign that we would see whales soon.
We decided to stop traveling and wait for the whales to arrive.
Only a couple of days later, a great white mass was spotted in front of us.
Dagu, one of the harpooners, spotted it first.
There! he shouted.
Look there!
The white whale!
It's the white whale!
Whenever someone gives the call that a whale is in sight, we move quickly.
This time, however, we moved at lightning speed.
No one wanted to miss this opportunity.
We did not want to lose the white whale.
In a few minutes, we were all in position again, and the four boats were lowered into the water.
Ahab's boat led the rest.
We spotted the creature right away.
He was enormous.
His body was fast and pulpy, and he rose to the surface near our boats and then swam underwater.
My heart was beating fast.
I could not believe that we were so close to Moby Dick.
After so much talk and so many stories, we were finally going to capture the white whale.
I was surprised that he was so calm.
All the stories I heard were of him breaking boats with his tail and sending sailors overboard.
This creature rose to the surface, then sank again.
He was gentle.
He did not seem to even notice the boats surrounding him.
It's not our whale, I heard Starbuck say quietly.
No one else in our boat heard him.
We were all so focused on the white creature beneath us.
Queequeg was standing up with a harpoon in hand.
He was waiting for our boat to get close enough so he could throw his spear.
Not Moby Dick, I said.
It's another monster of the deep, Starbuck said.
He looked at me across our whale boat.
The giant squid.
Few men have seen it.
Many people believe they are the largest creatures in the sea.
Certainly, this squid here is just as frightening as our white whale.
It might even be as dangerous as Moby Dick.
But it is not Moby Dick, I said.
Starbuck shook his head slowly.
I wondered if he was disappointed that it was not the white whale.
Was that why Starbuck was so calm?
Or was he relieved that it was not Moby Dick?
I then noticed that Ahab, without saying a word, turned his boat back to the Pequod.
He must have realized that it was a squid, too.
When we returned to the ship, Ahab was already in his cabin.
He did not come out again for another three days.
