- end_line
- 19787
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-23T15:41:06.411Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 19720
- text
- 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.
Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than
one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as
developed in the mariner’s needle, is, as all know, essentially one
with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much
marvelled at, that such things should be. Instances where the lightning
has actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars
and rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more
fatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before
magnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife’s knitting needle.
But in either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the
original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be
affected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship;
even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.
Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed
compasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took
the precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were
exactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship’s course to be
changed accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod
thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair
one had only been juggling her.
Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said
nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Stubb and
Flask—who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his
feelings—likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some
of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their fear
of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost
wholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain
magnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab’s.
For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But
chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper
sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.
“Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun’s pilot! yesterday I wrecked
thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But
Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck—a lance without
a pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker’s needles.
Quick!”
Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about
to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to
revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a
matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old
man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily
practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious
sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.
“Men,” said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him
the things he had demanded, “my men, the thunder turned old Ahab’s
needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own,
that will point as true as any.”
Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as
this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic
might follow. But Starbuck looked away.
- title
- Chunk 4