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Table of Contents
Chapter 23
THE LEE SHORE
Some chapters back, one
Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, new-landed mariner, encountered in New
Bedford at the inn. When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust
her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see ..
2 standing at her helm
but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man,
who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so
unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed
scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep
memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of
Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed
ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give
succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone,
supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in
that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly
all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make
her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off
shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her
homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake
forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe! Know ye, now,
Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth;
that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep
the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth
conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness
alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God --so, better is
it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the
lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl
to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take
heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy
ocean-perishing --straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! ..
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