CHAPTER 130

  The Hat

  And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide

a preliminary cruise, Ahab,- all other whaling waters swept- seemed to

have chased his foe into an oceanfold, to slay him the more securely

there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and

longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a

vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually

encountered Moby Dick;- and now that all his successive meetings

with various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac

indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether

sinning or sinned against; now it was that there lurked a something in

the old man's eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to

see. As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong,

arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze;

so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant

midnight of the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so, that all

their bodings, doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath

their souls, and not sprout forth a single spear or leaf.

  In this foreshadowing interval, too, all humor, forced or natural,

vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more

strove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed

ground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped

mortar of Ahab's iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the

deck, ever conscious that the old man's despot eye was on them.

  But did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours

when he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen

that even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable

Parsee's glance awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at

times affected it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to

invest the thin Fedallah now; such ceaseless shudderings shook him;

that the men looked dubious at him; half uncertain, as it seemed,

whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a tremulous

shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being's body. And that shadow

was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever

certainly been known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for

hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan but wondrous eves did

plainly say- We two watchmen never rest.

  Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon

the deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his

pivot-hole, or exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating

limits,- the main-mast and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in

the cabin-scuttle,- his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to

step; his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however

motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that

he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching

hat, they could never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his

eyes were really closed at times; or whether he was still intently

scanning them; no matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a

whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gathered in

beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The clothes that the

night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him; and so, day

after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath the

planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for.

  He ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,- breakfast

and dinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which

darkly grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which

still grow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper

verdure. But though his whole life was now become one watch on deck;

and though the Parsee's mystic watch was without intermission as his

own; yet these two never seemed to speak- one man to the other- unless

at long intervals some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary.

Though such a potent spell seemed secretly to join the twain;

openly, and to the awe-struck crew, they seemed pole-like asunder.

If by day they chanced to speak one word; by night, dumb men were

both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange. At

times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted

in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the main-mast;

but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw

his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.

  And yet, somehow, did Ahab- in his own proper self, as daily,

hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,-

Ahab seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again

both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the

lean shade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all

rib and keel was solid Ahab.

  At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was

heard from aft,- "Man the mast-heads!"- and all through the day,

till after sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at

the striking of the helmsman's bell, was heard- "What d'ye see?-

sharp! sharp!"

  But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the

children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the

monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity; at

least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt,

even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight

he sought. But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously

refrained from verbally expressing them, however his actions might

seem to hint them.

  "I will have the first sight of the whale myself,"- he said. "Aye!

Ahab must have the doubloon! and with his own hands he rigged a nest

of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single

sheaved block, to secure to the mainmast head, he received the two

ends of the downwardreeved rope; and attaching one to his basket

prepared, pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail.

This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the

pin, he looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other;

pausing his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but

shunning Fedallah; and then settling his firm relying eye upon the

chief mate, said,- "Take the rope, sir- I give it into thy hands,

Starbuck." Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word

for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured

the rope at last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one

hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for

miles and miles,- ahead astern, this side, and that,- within the

wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height.

  When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place

in the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea

is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under

these circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in

strict charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because

in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different

relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is

seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are

being every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but

a natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the

hoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast

adrift and fall all swooping to the sea. So Ahab's proceedings in this

matter were not unusual; the only strange thing about them seemed to

be, that Starbuck, almost the one only man who had ever ventured to

oppose him with anything in the slightest degree approaching to

decision- one of those too, whose faithfulness on the look-out he

had seemed to doubt somewhat; it was strange, that this was the very

man he should select for his watchman; freely giving his whole life

into such an otherwise distrusted person's hands.

  Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there

ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often

fly incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in

these latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming

round his head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it

darted a thousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized

downwards, and went eddying again round his head.

  But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab

seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else

have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now

almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning

meaning in almost every sight.

  "Your hat, your hat, sir!" suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who

being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab,

though somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air

dividing them.

  But already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes; the long

hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away

with his prize.

  An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to

replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin

would be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that

omen accounted good. Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew

on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared;

while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was

dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.