noon
We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under ; even here , above-ground , in the air ; how vast , then , the burden of a whale , bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean ! It must at least equal the weight of fifty atmospheres . One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty line-of-battle ships , with all their guns , and stores , and men on board . As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea , gazing down into its eternal blue noon ; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort , nay , not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths ; what landsman would have thought , that beneath all that silence and placidity , the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony ! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows . Seems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock . Suspended ?