And yet, ’tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing that that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage
mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objes, not as agents.
ere’s a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there’s something all glorious and gracious in the wind. ese warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so direly blow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What d’ye see?”
“Nothing, Sir.”
“Nothing! and noon at hand! e doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!
Aye, aye, it must be so. I’ve oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, he’s chasing me now; not I, him—that’s bad; I might have known it, too. Fool! the lines—the harpoons he’s towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the regular look outs! Man the braces!”
Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod’s quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direion, the braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own white wake.
“Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw,” murmured Starbuck to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main- brace upon the rail. “God keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!”
“Stand by to sway me up!” cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen basket. “We should meet him soon.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” and straightway Starbuck did Ahab’s bidding, and once more Ahab swung on high.
A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. time itself now held long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from the three mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had voiced it.
“Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On deck there!—brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind’s eye. He’s too far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. e sails shake! Stand over that helmsman with a top- maul!
So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there’s time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of Nantucket! e same!—the same!—the same to Noah as to me.
ere’s a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! ey must lead somewhere—to something else than common land, more palmy than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward, then; the better if the
bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old mast-head! What’s this?—green?
aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab’s head! ere’s the difference now between man’s old age and matter’s. But aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship?
Aye, minus a leg, that’s all. By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way. I can’t compare with it; and I’ve known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What’s that he said? he should still go before me, my pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all night I’ve been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou told’st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good by, mast- head—keep a good eye upon the whale, the while I’m gone. We’ll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail.”
He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered through the cloven blue air to the deck.
In due time the boats were lowered, but as standing in his shallop’s stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the mate, —who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck—and bade him pause.
“Starbuck!”
“Sir?”
“For the third time my soul’s ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck.”
“Aye, Sir, thou wilt have it so.”
“Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!”
“Truth, Sir: saddest truth.”
“Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the flood;—and I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb, Starbuck. I am old;—shake hands with me, man.”
eir hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue.
“Oh, my captain, my captain!—noble heart—go not—go not!— see, it’s a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!”
“Lower away!”—cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s arm from him. “Stand by the crew!”
In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.
“e sharks! the sharks!” cried a voice from the low cabin-window there; “O
master, my master, come back!”
But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the boat leaped on.
Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time they dipped in the water;
and in this way accompanied the boat with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab’s crew were all such tiger- yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the senses of the sharks—a matter sometimes well known to affe them,—however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting the others.
“Heart of wrought steel!” murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and following with his eyes the receding boat—“canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight?”—lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?—For when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing—be that end what it may.
Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet expeant,—fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl!
