- char_end
- 484739
- char_start
- 476940
- chunk_index
- 67
- chunk_total
- 178
- estimated_tokens
- 1950
- source_file_key
- moby-dick
- text
- the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew,
for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was
over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual
man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual
mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in
a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck’s body and Starbuck’s coerced
will were Ahab’s, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck’s brain;
still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred
his captain’s quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself
from it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would
elapse ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck
would ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his
captain’s leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial
influences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle
insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways more significantly
manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing
that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that
strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the
full terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure
background (for few men’s courage is proof against protracted
meditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night
watches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of
than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had
hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are
more or less capricious and unreliable—they live in the varying outer
weather, and they inhale its fickleness—and when retained for any
object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and
passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary
interests and employments should intervene and hold them healthily
suspended for the final dash.
Nor was Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion
mankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent.
The permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought
Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the
hearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even
breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for
the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also have food
for their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and
chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two
thousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without
committing burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious
perquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final
and romantic object—that final and romantic object, too many would have
turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of
all hopes of cash—aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some
months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this
same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would
soon cashier Ahab.
Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related
to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps
somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the
Pequod’s voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he
had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of
usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew
if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further
obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From
even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible
consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must
of course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection
could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand,
backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute
atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be
subjected to.
For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be
verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good
degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod’s
voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force
himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general
pursuit of his profession.
Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three
mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit
reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.
CHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.
It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging
about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters.
Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,
for an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet
somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie
lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own
invisible self.
I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I
kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the
long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as
Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword
between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly
and unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess
did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only
broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as
if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically
weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of
the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging
vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise
interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed
necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle
and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,
Queequeg’s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof
slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;
and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding
contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage’s
sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and
woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance—aye, chance, free
will, and necessity—nowise incompatible—all interweavingly working
together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its
ultimate course—its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending
to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;
and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of
necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though
thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the
last featuring blow at events.
Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so
strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of
free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds
whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees
was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly
forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden
intervals he continued his cries.