Then groping about by the light of the moon,
He soon laid his hand on his trusty harpoon;
A moment he poised it, to send it more pat,
And then made a plunge to imbed it in fat!
“Starn all!” he sang out, “as you care for your lives—
Starn all, as you hope to return to your wives—
Stand by for the flurry! she throws up the foam!
Well done, my old iron, I’ve sent you right home!”
And scarce had he spoken, when lo! bolt upright
The Leviathan rose in a great sheet of white,
And swiftly advanced for a fathom or two,
As only a fish out of water could do.
“Starn all!” echoed Ben, with a movement aback,
But too slow to escape from the creature’s attack;
If flippers it had, they were furnish’d with nails,—
“You willin, I’ll teach you that Women an’t Whales!”
“Avast!” shouted Ben, with a sort of a screech,
“I’ve heard a Whale spouting, but here is a speech!”
“A-spouting, indeed!—very pretty,” said she;
“But it’s you I’ll blow up, not the froth of the sea!
“To go to pretend to take me for a fish!
You great Polar Bear—but I know what you wish—
You’re sick of a wife, that your hankering baulks,—
You want to go back to some young Esquimax!”
“O dearest,” cried Ben, frighten’d out of his life,
“Don’t think I would go for to murder a wife
I must long have bewailed”—“But she only cried Stuff!
Don’t name it, you brute, you’ve be-whaled me enough!”
“Lord, Polly!” said Ben, “such a deed could I do?
I’d rather have murder’d all Wapping than you!
Come, forgive what is passed.” “O you monster!” she cried,
“It was none of your fault that it passed of one side!”
However, at last she inclined to forgive;
“But, Ben, take this warning as long as you live—
If the love of harpooning so strong must prevail,
Take a whale for a wife, not a wife for a whale.”