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- moby-dick
- text
- tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab first paid out more
line: and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again—hoping
that way to disencumber it of some snarls—when lo!—a sight more savage
than the embattled teeth of sharks!
Caught and twisted—corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons
and lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came flashing
and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab’s boat. Only one
thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached
within—through—and then, without—the rays of steel; dragged in the line
beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice sundering
the rope near the chocks—dropped the intercepted fagot of steel into
the sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the White Whale made a
sudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines; by so
doing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Stubb and Flask
towards his flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on a
surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a
boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of
the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly
stirred bowl of punch.
While the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after
the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while
aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching
his legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb was
lustily singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old
man’s line—now parting—admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to
rescue whom he could;—in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand
concreted perils,—Ahab’s yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards
Heaven by invisible wires,—as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly
from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its
bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell
again—gunwale downwards—and Ahab and his men struggled out from under
it, like seals from a sea-side cave.
The first uprising momentum of the whale—modifying its direction as he
struck the surface—involuntarily launched him along it, to a little
distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his
back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from
side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip or
crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and
came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work
for that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the
ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his
leeward way at a traveller’s methodic pace.
As before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again
came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the
floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at,
and safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists,
and ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances;
inextricable intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these
were there; but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen
any one. As with Fedallah the day before, so Ahab was now found grimly
clinging to his boat’s broken half, which afforded a comparatively easy
float; nor did it so exhaust him as the previous day’s mishap.
But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him; as
instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of
Starbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory
leg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter.
“Aye, aye, Starbuck, ’tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he
will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has.”
“The ferrule has not stood, sir,” said the carpenter, now coming up; “I
put good work into that leg.”
“But no bones broken, sir, I hope,” said Stubb with true concern.
“Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!—d’ye see it.—But even with a
broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living bone of
mine one jot more me, than this dead one that’s lost. Nor white whale,
nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and
inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape
yonder roof?—Aloft there! which way?”
“Dead to leeward, sir.”
“Up helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of
the spare boats and rig them—Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat’s
crews.”
“Let me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir.”
“Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the
unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!”
“Sir?”
“My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane—there, that
shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet.
By heaven it cannot be!—missing?—quick! call them all.”
The old man’s hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company, the
Parsee was not there.
“The Parsee!” cried Stubb—“he must have been caught in——”
“The black vomit wrench thee!—run all of ye above, alow, cabin,
forecastle—find him—not gone—not gone!”
But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was
nowhere to be found.
“Aye, sir,” said Stubb—“caught among the tangles of your line—I thought
I saw him dragging under.”
“_My_ line! _my_ line? Gone?—gone? What means that little word?—What
death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry.
The harpoon, too!—toss over the litter there,—d’ye see it?—the forged
iron, men, the white whale’s—no, no, no,—blistered fool! this hand did
dart it!—’tis in the fish!—Aloft there! Keep him nailed—Quick!—all
hands to the rigging of the boats—collect the oars—harpooneers! the
irons, the irons!—hoist the royals higher—a pull on all the
sheets!—helm there! steady, steady for your life! I’ll ten times girdle
the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I’ll slay
him yet!”
“Great God! but for one single instant show thyself,” cried Starbuck;
“never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—In Jesus’ name no more of
this, that’s worse than devil’s madness. Two days chased; twice stove
to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil
shadow gone—all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:—what more
wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he
swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the
sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety
and blasphemy to hunt him more!”
“Starbuck, of late I’ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that
hour we both saw—thou know’st what, in one another’s eyes. But in this
matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this
hand—a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This
whole act’s immutably decreed. ’Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion
years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant; I act
under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round
me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered
lance; propped up on a lonely foot. ’Tis Ahab—his body’s part; but
Ahab’s soul’s a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel
strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a
gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye’ll hear me crack; and till
ye hear _that_, know that Ahab’s hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe
ye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore!
For ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface;
then rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick—two days he’s
floated—tomorrow will be the third.