CHAPTER 51

  The Spirit-Spout

  Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly

swept across four several cruising-grounds; 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 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, 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 selfsame 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 foamflakes 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 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 respose in his hammock. Never could

Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into

the cabin to mark how the 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 eves were pointed towards the

needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in the ceiling.*

  *The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to

the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform

himself of the course of the ship.

  Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in

this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.