If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object. 'When you see him ’quid,' said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted boat, 'then you quick see him ’parm whale.
' The next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod’s crew could hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea.
For this part of the Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins, flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.
It was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air.
No resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.
Ere forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the main and mizen mast-heads were already drowsy.
So that at last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman.
The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all. Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved me; with