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- immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from
out the daintiest Holland.
Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and
humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;
propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not
to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to
such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short
of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and
bring us napkins!
But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent
on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil
the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot
somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest
uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through
for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their
wrists with all day rowing on the Line,—they only step to the deck to
carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash,
yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the
combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works;
when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves
to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the
time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks,
are startled by the cry of “There she blows!” and away they fly to
fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my
friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we
mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its
small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed
ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean
tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when—_There she
blows!_—the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other
world, and go through young life’s old routine again.
Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two
thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with
thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught
thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!
CHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.
Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck,
taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in
the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been
added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood,
he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely
eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the
binnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the
compass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of
his purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the
mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted
gold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness, only
dashed with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.
But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly
attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as
though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in
some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some
certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little
worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell
by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass
in the Milky Way.
Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of
the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands,
the head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst
all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes,
yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its
Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour
passed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with
thick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless
every sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it
was set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however
wanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as
the white whale’s talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary
watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he
would ever live to spend it.
Now those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun
and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun’s
disks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving,
are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems
almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by
passing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.
It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy
example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,
REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country
planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and
named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the
unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the
likeness of three Andes’ summits; from one a flame; a tower on another;
on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of
the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual
cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at
Libra.
Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by others, was now
pausing.
“There’s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and
all other grand and lofty things; look here,—three peaks as proud as
Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the
courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all
are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,
which, like a magician’s glass, to each and every man in turn but
mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for
those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks
now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the
sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out
of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born
in throes, ’tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So
be it, then! Here’s stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.”
“No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil’s claws must
have left their mouldings there since yesterday,” murmured Starbuck to
himself, leaning against the bulwarks. “The old man seems to read
Belshazzar’s awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.
He goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three mighty,
heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint
earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over
all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a
hope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;
but if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to
cheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we
would fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain!
This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me.