1 They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball.
2 He now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the chains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of bag.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud. 3 The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side, where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing him.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 73. Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then ... 4 Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes and hawsers; chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be more hideous than a caged tiger, then.
5 Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast loose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 91. The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud. 6 Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the noon-day air.
7 Very soon you would have thought from the sound on the Pequod's decks, that all hands were preparing to cast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, and thrust rattling out of the port-holes.
8 By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side of the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily made to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with its broad flukes or lobes.
9 While thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.