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- sink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall
I?—The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails
are reefed and set; she heads her course.”
“Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!”
Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man’s
tormented sleep, as if Starbuck’s voice had caused the long dumb dream
to speak.
The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard’s arm against the panel;
Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he
placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.
“He’s too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell
him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know’st what to say.”
CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of
mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod’s gurgling track, pushed her on
like giants’ palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded
so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world
boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the
invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place;
where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned
Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a
crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time
the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to
eye the bright sun’s rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly
settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun’s rearward
place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating
wake.
“Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot
of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to
ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!”
But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards
the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.
“East-sou-east, sir,” said the frightened steersman.
“Thou liest!” smiting him with his clenched fist. “Heading East at this
hour in the morning, and the sun astern?”
Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then
observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very
blinding palpableness must have been the cause.
Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught one glimpse
of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost
seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two
compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.
But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the
old man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, “I have it! It has happened
before. Mr. Starbuck, last night’s thunder turned our compasses—that’s
all. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.”
“Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir,” said the pale mate,
gloomily.
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