- end_line
- 19379
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:49:30.774Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 19313
- text
- constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the
gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and
seemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted
mouth of Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely
gleamed as if they too had been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by
the preternatural light, Queequeg’s tattooing burned like Satanic blue
flames on his body.
The tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once more
the Pequod and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment
or two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one.
It was Stubb. “What thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it was not
the same in the song.”
“No, no, it wasn’t; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I
hope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?—have
they no bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck—but it’s too dark
to look. Hear me, then: I take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign
of good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be
chock a’ block with sperm-oil, d’ye see; and so, all that sperm will
work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will
yet be as three spermaceti candles—that’s the good promise we saw.”
At that moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb’s face slowly beginning
to glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: “See! see!” and once
more the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled
supernaturalness in their pallor.
“The corpusants have mercy on us all,” cried Stubb, again.
At the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame,
the Parsee was kneeling in Ahab’s front, but with his head bowed away
from him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging rigging, where
they had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen,
arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous, like a
knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various
enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running
skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all
their eyes upcast.
“Aye, aye, men!” cried Ahab. “Look up at it; mark it well; the white
flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast
links there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against
it; blood against fire! So.”
Then turning—the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot
upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm,
he stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.
“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian
once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that
to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I
now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor
reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and
all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless,
placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will
dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of
the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a
point at best; whencesoe’er I came; wheresoe’er I go; yet while I
earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal
rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of
love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere
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.”
- title
- Chunk 3