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- supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted
worlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou
clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of
fire, I breathe it back to thee.”
[_Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap
lengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes
his eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them._]
“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung
from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can
then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the
homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The
lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my
whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning
ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though
thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of
light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not?
There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my
genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know
not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but
thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself
unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself
unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou
omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear
spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness
mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly
see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast
thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with
haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap
with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly
I worship thee!”
“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”
Ahab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained firmly lashed
in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat’s
bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather
sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a
levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there
like a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm—“God, God is
against thee, old man; forbear! ’tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill
continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a
fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”
Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
braces—though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast
mate’s thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But
dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the
burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to
transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope’s end.
Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart
that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:—
“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and
heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye
may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out
the last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the
flame.
As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of
some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it
so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for
thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did
run from him in a terror of dismay.
CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
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