_ It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air
was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust
and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as
Samson's chest in his sleep.
Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed
mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,
troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.
But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades
and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it
were, that distinguished them.
Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle
air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the
girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion--most seen
here at the Equator--denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving
alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly
firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in
the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of
the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
forehead of heaven.
Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky!
how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I
seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol
around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which
grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side
and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze,
the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But
the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel,
for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air,
that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother
world, so long cruel--forbidding--now threw affectionate arms round
his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over
one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her
heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab
dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such
wealth as that one wee drop.
Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the
side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless
sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful
not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and
stood there.
Ahab turned.
"Starbuck!"
"Sir."
"Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On
such a day--very much such a sweetness as this--I struck my first
whale--a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty--forty--forty years
ago!--ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of
privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless
sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty
years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck,
out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think
of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the
masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but
small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without--oh,
weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary
command!--when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so
keenly known to me before--and how for forty years I have fed upon
dry salted fare--fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!--when
the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and
broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts--away, whole
oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and
sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my
marriage pillow--wife? wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive!
Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and
then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking
brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously,
foamingly chased his prey--more a demon than a man!--aye, aye! what a
forty years' fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this
strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the
iron, and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold.
Oh, Starbuck! is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one
poor leg should have been snatched from under me? Here, brush this
old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did
never grow but from out some ashes! But do I look very old, so very,
very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as
though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since
Paradise. God! God! God!--crack my heart!--stave my
brain!--mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have
I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus intolerably
old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human
eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze
upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the
magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no;
stay on board, on board!--lower not when I do; when branded Ahab
gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no!
not with the far away home I see in that eye!"
"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!
why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let
us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are
Starbuck's--wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow
youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,
longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!--this instant let me
alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would
we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they
have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket."
"They have, they have. I have seen them--some summer days in the
morning. About this time--yes, it is his noon nap now--the boy
vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of
cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come
back to dance him again."
"'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every
morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of
his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for
Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away!
See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the
hill!"
But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook,
and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.
"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep
pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst
not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that
lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an
errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some
invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one
small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that
thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned
round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the
handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this
unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase
and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to
doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a
mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as
if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay
somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are
sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may,
we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid
greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut
swaths--Starbuck!"
But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen
away.
Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was
motionlessly leaning over the same rail. _