thus we were weaving and weaving away when i started at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and i stood gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing. high aloft in the cross-trees was that mad gay-header, tashtego. his body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries. to be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen’s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous cadence as from tashtego the indian’s.