But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it."
"Aye, and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and what in all things makes the sounding-board is this—there's naught beneath.
And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.
Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against the churchyard gate, going in?
"Faith, sir, I've—"
"Faith?
What's that?"
"Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of exclamation-like—that's all, sir."
"Um, um; go on."
"I was about to say, sir, that—"
"Art thou a silk-worm?
Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?
Look at thy bosom!
Despatch! and get these traps out of sight."
"He goes aft.
That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot latitudes.
I've heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle.
Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle.
He's always under the Line—fiery hot, I tell ye!
He's looking this way—come, oakum; quick.
Here we go again.
This wooden mallet is the cork, and I'm the professor of musical glasses—tap, tap!" (AHAB TO HIMSELF.)
"There's a sight!
There's a sound!
The grey-headed woodpecker tapping the hollow tree!
Blind and dumb might well be envied now.
See! that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines.
A most malicious wag, that fellow.
Rat-tat!
So man's seconds tick!
Oh! how immaterial are all materials!
What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts?
Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life.
A life-buoy of a coffin!
Does it go further?
Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!
I'll think of that.
But no.
So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.
Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed sound?
I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return again.
Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee!
Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee!"
CHAPTER 128. The Pequod Meets The Rachel.
Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men.
At the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull.
"Bad news; she brings bad news," muttered the old Manxman.
But ere her commander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he could hopefully hail, Ahab's voice was heard.
"Hast seen the White Whale?"
"Aye, yesterday.