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Table of Contents
Chapter 38
DUSK
By the Mainmast; Starbuck
leaning against it. My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a
madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field!
But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see
his impious end; but feel that ..
2 I must help him to it.
Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I
have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries; --aye, he
would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I
plainly see my miserable office, --to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate
with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up,
had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the
round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe.
His heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it
not like lead. But my whole clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling
weight, I have no key to lift again. [ A burst of revelry from the
forecastle.] Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch
of human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white
whale is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is forward!
mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost through
the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but only to
drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his sternward cabin, builded
over the dead water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish
gurglings. The long howl thrills me through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the
watch! Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to
knowledge, --as wild, untutored things are forced to feed --Oh, life! 'tis now
that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out
of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight
ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed
influences! ..
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