Moby Dick; Or, The Whale
Page 52
CHAPTER 51
The Spirit-Spout
Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequodhad slowly swept across four several cruising-grounds;that off the Azores; off the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate(so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata;and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality,southerly from St. Helena.
It was while gliding through these latter waters that oneserene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by likescrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings,made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such asilent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the whitebubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial;seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights,it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and standa look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day.And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not onewhaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them.You may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheldthis old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours;his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But when,after spending his uniform interval there for several successivenights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence,his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet,every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some wingedspirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew."There she blows!" Had the trump of judgment blown,they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror;rather pleasure. For though it was a most unwonted hour,yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting,that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commandedthe t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread.The best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with everymast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind.The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breezefilling the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deckto feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along,as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her--one to mountdirect to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal.And had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thoughtthat in him also two different things were warring. While his one liveleg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limbsounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked.But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye,like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was nomore seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but nota second time.
This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when,some days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced:again it was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it,once more it disappeared as if it had never been. And so it servedus night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it.Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight,as the case might be; disappearing again for one whole day,or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at every distinctrepetition to be advancing still further and further in our van,this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race,and in accordance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed,which in many things invested the Pequod, were there wantingsome of the seamen who swore that whenever and wherever descried;at however remote times, or in however far apart latitudesand longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one selfsame whale;and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a senseof peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it weretreacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monstermight turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotestand most savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived awondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather,in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought therelurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along,through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space,in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itselfof life before our urn-like prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape windsbegan howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long,troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharplybowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till,like showers of silver chips, the foamflakes flew over her bulwarks;then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave placeto sights more dismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thitherbefore us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. Andevery morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen;and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft;a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-placefor their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestinglyheaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience;and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the longsin and suffering it had bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto,as called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silencesthat before had attended us, we found ourselves launched into thistormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowlsand these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly withoutany haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon.But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountainof feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before,the solitary jet would at times be descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assumingfor the time the almost continual command of the drenched anddangerous deck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldomthan ever addressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these,after everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing morecan be done but passively to await the issue of the gale.Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists. So, with hisivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one handfirmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would standgazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleetor snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes together.Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part of the shipby the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the betterto guard against the leaping waves, each man had slippedhimself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail, in whichhe swung as in a loosened belt. Few or no words were spoken;and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors in wax,day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladnessof the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanitybefore the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the menswung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast.Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seekthat repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the oldman's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to markhow the barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sittingstraight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-meltedsleet of the storm from which he had some time before emerged,still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat.On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those chartsof tides and currents which have previously been spoken of.His lantern swung from his tightly clenched hand.Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so thatthe closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-talethat swung from a beam in the ceiling.*
*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because withoutgoing to the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below,can inform himself of the course of the ship.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this gale,still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.