What means that little word?—What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry.
The harpoon, too!—toss over the litter there,—d'ye see it?—the forged iron, men, the white whale's—no, no, no,—blistered fool! this hand did dart it!—'tis in the fish!—Aloft there!
Keep him nailed—Quick!—all hands to the rigging of the boats—collect the oars—harpooneers! the irons, the irons!—hoist the royals higher—a pull on all the sheets!—helm there! steady, steady for your life!
I'll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I'll slay him yet!
"Great God! but for one single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness.
Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone—all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:—
"What more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man?
Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea?
Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world?
Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!"
"Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw—thou know'st what, in one another's eyes.
But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand—a lipless, unfeatured blank.
Ahab is for ever Ahab, man.
This whole act's immutably decreed.
'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled.
Fool!
I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders.
Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me, men.
Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot.
'Tis Ahab—his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs.
I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so.
But ere I break, yell hear me crack; and till ye hear THAT, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet.
Believe ye, men, in the things called omens?
Then laugh aloud, and cry encore!
For ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for evermore.
So with Moby Dick—two days he's floated—tomorrow will be the third.
Aye, men, he'll rise once more,—but only to spout his last!
D'ye feel brave men, brave?"
"As fearless fire," cried Stubb.
"And as mechanical," muttered Ahab.
Then as the men went forward, he muttered on: "The things called omens!
And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat.
Oh! how valiantly I seek to drive out of others' hearts what's clinched so fast in mine!—The Parsee—the Parsee!—gone, gone? and he was to go before:—but still was to be seen again ere I could perish—How's that?—There's a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges:—like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain.
I'LL, I'LL solve it, though!"
When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.
So once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as on the previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the grindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow.
Meantime, of the broken keel of Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.
CHAPTER 135. The Chase.—Third Day.
The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.
"D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.
"In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all.
Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going.
What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world.
Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; THAT'S tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity.
God only has that right and privilege.
Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.
And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm—frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it.
And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava.
How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to.
A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces.