[…] Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened. The acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.
But as every well-brought-up prince was expected to kill a dragon, and rescue a princess, the dragons grew fewer and fewer till it was often quite hard for a princess to find a dragon to be rescued from.
The devil can both predict and make predictors.
The north section of the mine has also a crossback or cross-course, but the result at the crossing is so completely reversed that one is struck with astonishment to see the opposites in the same formation.
