meantime, ahab, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst boiler out of a mississippi steamer. as for fedallah, who was seen pulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and displayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon; while at the other end of the boat ahab, with one arm, like a fencer’s, thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip; ahab was seen steadily managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the white whale had torn him. all at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained fixed, while the boat’s five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. instantly the three spread boats in the rear paused on their way. the whales had irregularly settled bodily down into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement, though from his closer vicinity ahab had observed it.