- end_line
- 19790
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:49:30.774Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 19722
- text
- 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.
With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of the
lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade
him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the
maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he
placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly
hammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before.
Then going through some small strange motions with it—whether
indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to
augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain—he called for linen thread;
and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there,
and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of
the compass-cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering
and vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when
Ahab, who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly
back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it,
exclaimed,—“Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level
loadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!”
One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could
persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk
away.
In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his
fatal pride.
- title
- Chunk 2