|
Table of Contents
Chapter 51
THE
SPIRIT-SPOUT
Days, weeks passed, and
under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had 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 one serene and moonlight night, when
all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing
seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude: on such a
silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles 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
stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And
yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman ..
2 in a hundred would
venture a lowering for them. You may think with what emotions, then, the
seamen beheld this 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 successive nights 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 winged spirit 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 commanded the t'gallant sails and
royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship must
take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled
down before the wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail
breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck
to feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two
antagonistic influences were struggling in her --one to mount direct to
heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you
watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two
different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along
the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded 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
no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a 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 served us night after night, till no one
heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight,
..
3 or starlight, as the
case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three;
and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition 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 wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and wherever
descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart latitudes and
longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same whale; and that
whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at
this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on,
in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the
remotest and most savage seas. These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so
awful, derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the
weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked 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 itself of life before our urn-like prow. But, at last,
when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around us, and we
rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the
ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in
her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her
bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to
sights more dismal than before. Close to our bows, strange forms in the water
darted hither and thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the
inscrutable sea-ravens. And every 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-place for their
homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black
sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great ..
4 mundane soul were in
anguish and remorse for the long sin 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 silences that before had attended us, we found
ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed
into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly
without any haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon. But
calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of 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 assuming for
the time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck,
manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed his
mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and aloft has
been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await the issue of the
gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg
inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud,
Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an
occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very eyelashes
together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part of the ship by the
perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows, stood in a line along the
bulwarks in the waist; and the better to guard against the leaping waves, each
man had slipped himself into a sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which
he 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 gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same
muteness of humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in
silence the men swung in the bowlines; still wordless ahab stood up to the
blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that
repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when
one night going down into the cabin to mark how the ..
5 barometer stood, he
saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain
and half-melted sleet 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 charts of 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 that the closed eyes were pointed
towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this gale,
still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose. ..
.
|
