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- 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.”
[_Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap
lengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes
his eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them._]
“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung
from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can
then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the
homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The
lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my
whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning
ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though
thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of
light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not?
There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my
genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know
not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but
thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself
unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself
unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou
omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear
spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness
mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly
see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast
thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with
haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap
with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly
I worship thee!”
“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”
Ahab’s harpoon, the one forged at Perth’s fire, remained firmly lashed
in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat’s
bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather
sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a
levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there
like a serpent’s tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm—“God, God is
against thee, old man; forbear! ’tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill
continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a
fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”
Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the
braces—though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast
mate’s thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But
dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the
burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to
transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope’s end.
Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart
that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:—
“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and
heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye
may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out
the last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the
flame.
As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of
some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it
so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for
thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab’s many of the mariners did
run from him in a terror of dismay.
CHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.
_Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him._
“We must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working
loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?”
“Strike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I’d sway them up
now.”
“Sir!—in God’s name!—sir?”
“Well.”
“The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?”
“Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises,
but it has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.—By
masts and keels! he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some
coasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest
trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now
sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards
send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft
there! I would e’en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic
is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!”
CHAPTER 121.