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Table of Contents
Chapter 29
ENTER AHAB; TO HIM, STUBB
Some days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all
astern, the Pequod now went rolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at
sea, almost perpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the
Tropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant
days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up --flaked up, with
rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in
jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent
conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, 'twas hard to
choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the
witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and
potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially
when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as
the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle
agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture. Old age is always
wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught
that looks like death. among sea-commanders, the old greybeards will oftenest
leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so with Ahab; only
that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air, that truly
speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from, the cabin to the
planks. It feels like going down into one's tomb, --he would mutter to
himself, -- for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle,
to go to my grave-dug berth. So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the
watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers
of the band below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle,
the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, ..
2 but with some cautiousness dropt it to
its place, for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort
of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman
would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, griping
at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considerating touch of
humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from
patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose
within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating
crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have been of the
crunching teeth of sharks. But once, the mood was on him too deep for common
regardings; and as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from
taffrail to mainmast, Stubb, the odd second mate, came up from below, and with
a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was
pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say nay; but there might be
some way of muffling the noise; hinting something indistinctly and
hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion into it, of the ivory
heel. Ah! Stubb, thou did'st not know Ahab then. Am I a cannon-ball, Stubb,
said Ahab, that thou wouldst wad me that fashion? But go thy ways; I had
forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where such as ye sleep between shrouds, to
use ye to the filling one at last. --Down, dog, and kennel! Starting at the
unforeseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful old man, Stubb
was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, I am not used to be spoken to
that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir. Avast! gritted Ahab
between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid some
passionate temptation. No, sir; not yet, said Stubb, emboldened, I will not
tamely be called a dog, sir. Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule,
and an ass, and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee! As he said this, Ahab
advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb
involuntarily retreated. I was never served so before without giving a hard
blow for it, muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle.
..
3 It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow,
now, I don't well know whether to go back and strike him, or --what's that? --
down here on my knees and pray for him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in
me; but it would be the first time I ever did pray. It's queer; very queer;
and he's queer too; aye, take him fore and aft, he's about the queerest old
man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at me! --his eyes like powder-pans!
is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind, as sure as there must be
something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either, more than
three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don't sleep then. Didn't that
Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always finds the old
man's hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down at the
foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of
frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess
he's got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it's a kind of
Tic-Dolly-row they say --worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don't know what
it is, but the Lord keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder
what he goes into the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he
suspects; what's that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with
him in the hold? Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old
game --Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born
into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it,
that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn
me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my
principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is
my twelfth -- So here goes again. But how's that? didn't he call me a dog?
blazes! he called me ten times a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top
of that! He might as well have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he did kick
me, and I didn't observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow.
It flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil's the matter with me? I don't
stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me
wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming, though --How? how?
how? --but the only way's ..to stash it; so here goes to hammock again; and in
the morning, I'll see how this plaguey juggling thinks over by day-light..
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