CHAPTER 135

  The Chase - Third Day

  The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more

the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of

the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.

  "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.

  "In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all.

Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a

lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a

summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing

open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food

for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only

feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's

audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought

to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our

poor brains beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my

brain was very calm- frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a

glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still

this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it;

but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere,

between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How

the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of

split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has

no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and

wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing

hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!- it's tainted. Were I

the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd

crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble

and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it

has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run

through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will

not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing- a

nobler thing than that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the

things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things

are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a

most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And

yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there's something all

glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least,

that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast,

vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser

currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies

of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And

by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my

good ship on; these Trades, or something like them- something so

unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it!

Aloft there! What d'ye see?"

  "Nothing, sir."

  "Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the

sun! Aye, aye, it must be so. I've over-sailed him. How, got the

start? Aye, he's chasing me now; not I, him- that's bad; I might

have known it, too. Fool! the lines- the harpoons he's towing. Aye,

aye, I have run him by last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye,

but the regular look outs! Man the braces!"

  Steering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's

quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the

braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream

in her own white wake.

  "Against the wind he now steers for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck

to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. "God

keep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside

wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!"

  "Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen

basket. "We should meet him soon."

  "Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck did Ahab's bidding, and

once more Ahab swung on high.

  A whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now

held long breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points

off the weather bow, Ahab descried the spout again, and instantly from

the three mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire

had voiced it.

  "Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On

deck there!- brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye. He's too

far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that

helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down.

But let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea;

there's time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young;

aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the

sand-hills of Nantucket! The same- the same!- the same to Noah as to

me. There's a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They

must lead somewhere- to something else than common land, more palmy

than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to

windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good

bye, old mast-head! What's this?- green? aye, tiny mosses in these

warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab's head! There's

the difference now between man's old age and matter's. But aye, old

mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though are we

not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all. By heaven this dead wood

has the better of my live flesh every way. I can't compare with it;

and I've known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of

men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What's that he

said? he should still go before me, my pilot; and yet to be seen

again? But where? Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing

I descend those endless stairs? and all night I've been sailing from

him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou toldist

direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot

fell short. Good bye, mast-head- keep a good eye upon the whale, the

while I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white

whale lies down there, tied by head and tail."

  He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered

through the cloven blue air to the deck.

  In due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop's

stern, Ahab just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to

the mate,- who held one of the tackle- ropes on deck- and bade him

pause.

  "Starbuck!"

  "Sir?"

  "For the third time my soul's ship starts upon this voyage,

Starbuck."

  "Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."

  "Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are

missing, Starbuck!"

  "Truth, sir: saddest truth."

  "Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of

the flood;- and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested

comb, Starbuck. I am old;- shake hands with me, man."

  Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue.

  "Oh, my captain, my captain!- noble heart- go not- go not!- see,

it's a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion

then!"

  "Lower away!"-cried Ahab, tossing the mate's arm from him. "Stand by

for the crew!"

  In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.

  "The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice from the low cabin-window

there; "O master, my master, come back!"

  But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then;

and the boat leaped on.

  Yet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship,

when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters

beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every

time they dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat

with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the

whale-boats in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently

following them in the same prescient way that vultures hover over

the banners of marching regiments in the east. But these were the

first sharks that had been observed by the Pequod since the White

Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that Ahab's crew

were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh

more musky to the senses of the sharks- a matter sometimes well

known to affect them,- however it was, they seemed to follow that

one boat without molesting the others.

  "Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side,

and following with his eyes the receding boat- "canst thou yet ring

boldly to that sight?- lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and

followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical

third day?- For when three days flow together in one continuous

intense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the

noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing- be that end

what it may. Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me, and

leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant,- fixed at the top of a

shudder! Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and

skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl; thou

fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes

grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem clearing; but

clouds sweep between- Is my journey's end coming? My legs feel

faint; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,- beat it

yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!- stave it off- move, move! speak

aloud!- Mast-head there! See ye my boy's hand on the hill?- Crazed;-

aloft there!- keep thy keenest eye upon the boats:- mark well the

whale!- Ho! again!- drive off that hawk! see! he pecks- he tears the

vane"- pointing to the red flag flying at the main-truck- "Ha, he

soars away with it!- Where's the old man now? see'st thou that

sight, oh Ahab!- shudder, shudder!"

  The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the

mast-heads- a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had

sounded; but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on

his way a little sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew

maintaining the profoundest silence, as the head-bent waves hammered

and hammered against the opposing bow.

  "Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads

drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin

and no hearse can be mine:- and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!"

  Suddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles;

then quickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of

ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard;

a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled

with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot

lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping

veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then

fell swamping back into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the

waters flashed for an instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly

sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the circling surface creamed

like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale.

  "Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted

forward to the attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that

corroded in him, Moby Dick seemed combinedly possessed by all the

angels that fell from heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons

overspreading his broad white forehead, beneath the transparent

skin, looked knitted together; as head on, he came churning his tail

among the boats; and once more flailed them apart; spilling out the

irons and lances from the two mates' boats, and dashing in one side of

the upper part of their bows, but leaving Ahab's almost without a

scar.

  While Daggoo and Queequeg were stopping the strained planks; and

as the whale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire

flank as he shot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up.

Lashed round and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns

upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the

involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the

Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended

eyes turned full upon old Ahab.

  The harpoon dropped from his hand.

  "Befooled, befooled!"- drawing in a long lean breath- "Aye,

Parsee! I see thee again.- Aye, and thou goest before; and this,

this then is the hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to

the last letter of thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away,

mates, to the ship! those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can

in time, and return to me; if not, Ahab is enough to die- Down, men!

the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in,

that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs;

and so obey me.- Where's the whale? gone down again?"

  But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with

the corpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last

encounter had been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was

now again steadily swimming forward; and had almost passed the

ship,- which thus far had been sailing in the contrary direction to

him, though for the present her headway had been stopped. He seemed

swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing

his own straight path in the sea.

  "Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third

day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou,

that madly seekest him!"

  Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly

impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab

was sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish

Starbuck's face as he leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn

the vessel about, and follow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious

interval. Glancing upwards he saw Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo,

eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the oarsmen were

rocking in the two staved boats which had just been hoisted to the

side, and were busily at work in repairing them. One after the

other, through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caught flying

glimpses of Stubb and Flask, busying themselves on deck among

bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all this; as he heard the

hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers seemed driving a nail

into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the vane or

flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had

just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a

hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.

  Whether fagged by the three days' running chase, and the

resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether

it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was

true, the White Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the

boat so rapidly nearing him once more; though indeed the whale's

last start had not been so long a one as before. And still as Ahab

glided over the waves the unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so

pertinaciously stuck to the boat; and so continually bit at the plying

oars, that the blades became jagged and crunched, and left small

splinters in the sea, at almost every dip.

  "Heed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull

on! 'tis the better rest, the sharks' jaw than the yielding water."

  "But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!"

  "They will last long enough! pull on!- But who can tell"- he

muttered- "whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on

Ahab?- But pull on! Aye, all alive, now- we near him. The helm! take

the helm! let me pass,"- and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him

forward to the bows of the still flying boat.

  At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along

with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its

advance- as the whale sometimes will- and Ahab was fairly within the

smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout,

curled round his great Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to

him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted

to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse

into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as

if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sidewise writhed; spasmodically

rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole

in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for

the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would

once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the

oarsmen- who foreknew not the precise instant of the dart, and were

therefore unprepared for its effects- these were flung out; but so

fell, that, in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again,

and rising to its level on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily

inboard again; the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still

afloat and swimming.

  Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,

instantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the

weltering sea. But when Ahab cried out to the steersman to take new

turns with the line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn

round on their seats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment

the treacherous line felt that double strain and tug, it snapped in

the empty air!

  "What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!- 'tis whole again; oars!

oars! Burst in upon him!"

  Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale

wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that

evolution, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship;

seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions;

bethinking it- it may be- a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he

bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers

of foam.

  Ahab staggered; his hand smote his forehead. "I grow blind; hands!

stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night?"

  "The whale! The ship!" cried the cringing oarsmen.

  "Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea that ere it be for

ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I

see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! will ye not save my ship?"

  But as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the

sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks

burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat

lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew,

trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.

  Meantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head

hammer remained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping

him as with a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as

his own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Stubb, standing upon

the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just

as soon as he.

  "The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers

of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a

woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say- ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is

this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long

fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady.

Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable

brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart.

My God, stand by me now!"

  "Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will

now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou

grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but

Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a

mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I

grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I

call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost.

For all that, I would yet ring glasses with thee, would ye but hand

the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty

of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and

jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over

salted death, though;- cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for

one red cherry ere we die!"

  "Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I

hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few

coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up."

  From the ship's bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive;

hammers, bits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in

their hands, just as they had darted from their various employments;

all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to

side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of

overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed.

Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect,

and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of

his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers

reeled. Some fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the

heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through

the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a

flume.

  "The ship! The hearse!- the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the

boat; "its wood could only be American!"

  Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along

its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface

again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat,

where, for a time, he lay quiescent.

  "I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy

hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked

keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and

Pole-pointed prow,- death- glorious ship! must ye then perish, and

without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest

shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I

feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all

your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole

foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee

I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I

grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I

spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one

common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces,

while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale!

Thus, I give up the spear!"

  The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with

igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;- ran foul. Ahab

stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him

round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their

victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone.

Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of

the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea,

disappeared in its depths.

  For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned.

"The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim,

bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous

Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by

infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the

pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking look-outs on the sea.

And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its

crew, and each floating oar, and every lancepole, and spinning,

animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried

the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.

  But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the

sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the

erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the

flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the

destroying billows they almost touched;- at that instant, a red arm

and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act

of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A

sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from

its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding

Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad

fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously

feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his

death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven,

with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and

his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with

his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had

dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself

with it.

  Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen

white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the

great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years

ago.