"After a while, the seeds of the great plants that grow far to the west, at the base of the cliffs there" --Africa? Ishmael thought, India? Indo-China? --"explode and send the brit high. And the whales begin to eat that, and the sharks eat the smaller creatures and occasionally a sick or wounded whale, and everything is restored as it was before the rains came."

The conversation turned to other matters, including Ishmael's story of the world from which he had come and what had happened after he had met Namalee. Ishmael understood after a while that Namalee had said nothing of the times when he had touched her or they kept each other warm. She must not have been exaggerating when she had said that her people would kill him if he molested a "vestal virgin." By molesting, of course, she meant even an accidental touch.

On an altar of bone was a bone box. Namalee took her place before it, donning a headdress of bone on which hundreds of the tiny red brit had been glued. A tiny fire burned in a wooden cup before the box.

All of the crew except those on duty were there. They fell to their knees when Namalee turned to them, intoning something in a language that was not the one she had taught Ishmael. He dropped to his knees too, because he felt that the others expected it. There was no reason to be stiff-necked or even discourteous. Nor was this the first time he had made obeisance to un-Christian gods, he thought. There was Hypocrisy and Greed and Hate and a pantheon of other deities of civilization. And he had taken part in the worship of Queequeg's idol, Yojo, with no afterqualms at all.

He got to his knees before the altar and the box, reflecting as the floor skin sagged under his weight and he looked down through thousands of feet of air, that he had never been so close to eternity before in a temple.

Namalee turned, still chanting, and lifted the box up. It had hidden an image about a foot high, carved of some ivory-white substance striated with red, green and black. It was half-whale and half-human, combining a bestial face with a human torso to the waist and a wind whale's tail where the legs should have been. It radiated an odor that was sweet and pleasant and, he was certain, intoxicating.

He had drunk enough shahamchiz to make him reel a little when he walked. But on sniffing the odor of the idol, he felt his senses staggering and after a while he fell flat on his face. Within a few seconds, he had passed out.

He awoke on the floor looking through several miles of air at the half-dead seas beneath. When he managed to sit up, groaning, he found that he was alone. His head ached as if he had been hit with a hammer. Or as if the Urfather of all hangovers had visited him just to show what gigantic aches the head of Adam had endured.

The box was over the idol. The remnants of the sweet and drunk-making odor were still in the room.

He staggered back to his cubicle and lay down and went to sleep.

When he awoke, he intended to ask about the perfume and its effects, but he found everybody too busy to talk to him. All the scurrying about and the transmission of orders was caused by the sighting of a pod of wind whales. The captain had decided that they must pause in their return homeward to hunt for food. Otherwise they would starve before they got near Zalarapamtra.

Ishmael felt much improved and, though his discretion told him that he was foolish, he asked the captain if he could take part in the hunt. He listed his qualifications, most of which consisted of a long and intense experience in hunting the monsters of the sea. But he could not see why he could not adapt himself to the requirements of the air.

"We could use an extra hand," Captain Baramha said. "But we can't have any clumsy or ignorant persons interfering at a critical moment. However, you do know how to sail, and the main difference between your experience and that of my crew is that you will be sailing in three dimensions instead of two. Very well. You will go with Karkri's boat. Go there at once and get your instructions."

The crew of an air ship never carried more than two extra hands because of weight restrictions. The Roolanga had lost one man early in its voyage when he had leaped or fallen off the ship while on night watch. Then Rashvarpa had died when thrown out of the boat, and a companion had broken his bones. So, needing all the help he could get, even if it was inexpert, the captain had accepted Ishmael.

Karkri, the harpooner, was not of the stature or musculature of the savage harpooners, men like lions, that Ishmael had known. No Daggoos, Tashtegos or Queequegs, these men were short and slight. Their legs were thin but their shoulders and arms were well developed. It did not take powerful muscles to drive a shaft into the head of a wind whale, if a man knew where to cast. There were many large openings in the skull under the thin tissue wrapping it. At the last moment the harpooner had to stand in the bow of the bucking boat as it ran alongside the monster and, hooking his feet under leather straps secured to the skin of the bottom of the boat, throw his lance. If it went through one of the wide gaps in the fragile and hollow structure, it would drive into the brain, the heart or the lungs. These organs were located inside the head, the kidneys, liver, spleen and others being strung out along the largely hollow interior of the whale's body. The whale, if stripped of his skin, would be revealed as mostly air and bladders enclosed in the bones. Ishmael, thinking of this and wondering if there was enough meat on the leviathan to justify the dangerous hunt, got into Karkri's boat. The harpooner looked dubious but said nothing. A sailor, Koojai, told Ishmael what he had to do. Ishmael had talked to some of the crew about the boats before the great storm and so knew the theory of sailing an air boat.

The two masts, one on top and one on the bottom, were swiveled to the horizontal by a joint near the butt and locked in place. The masts and yardarms were very slim and very light sections of bones fitting tightly into one another. After the boat was cast loose the crewmen rose, crouching. One reached down through a hole in the bottom of the hull, which was only a thin transparent skin, and unlocked the joint. Then, pulling on lines, they straightened the mast out and relocked it at the joint. The yardarm of the fore-and-aft rig was unlocked, straightened properly and relocked.

The upper mast was shorter and its sail smaller to ensure that it was more than counterbalanced by the mast beneath. After it was raised, the sail of the undermast was unfurled by lines attached to it. There were many small holes on the skin of the bottom so that a sailor could reach through to do his work. These had to be watched for when a crewman walked around the boat, but there was little walking once the sails were set.

Karkri had unfolded the enormous rudders, horizontal and vertical, used to steer the ship. He gave it over to the steersman and crawled as close to the central part of the boat as he could. In this light vessel, balance was important, and every shift of weight had to be carefully performed.

The sails caught the wind, and the boat forged swiftly ahead, overtaking the enormous mother ship even though it was departing at an angle from it. Ishmael, as the green hand, tended to the care of the upper sail. Koojai watched the other sail through the clear skin of the boat, ready to pull or release lines as ordered. If Koojai failed to receive an order because the harpooner was too busy or incapacitated, Koojai would carry out the operation on his own. It was also necessary for him to keep an eye on the inexperienced man and to make sure that he carried out his functions at the same time. It would never do to swing the upper boom one way and the lower another.