CHAPTER 52

  The Albatross

  South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good

cruising ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney

(Albatross) by name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at

the fore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a

tyro in the far ocean fisheries- a whaler at sea, and long absent from

home.

  As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the

skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral

appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all

her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred

over with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it

was to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads.

They seemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the

raiment that had survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in

iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless

sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we

six men in the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost

have leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of the other;

yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed,

said not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail

was being heard from below.

  "Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?"

  But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in

the act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from

his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain

strove to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still

increasing the distance between us. While in various silent ways the

seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous

incident at the first mere mention of the White Whale's name to

another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it almost seemed as though

he would have lowered a boat to board the stranger, had not the

threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage of his windward

position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect

that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home,

he loudly hailed- "Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the

world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean!

and this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address

them to-"

  At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly,

then, in accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless

fish, that for some days before had been placidly swimming by our

side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged

themselves fore and aft with the stranger's flanks. Though in the

course of his continual voyagings Ahab must often before have

noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest

trifles capriciously carry meanings.

  "Swim away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the

water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed

more of deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever

before evinced. But turning to the steersman, who thus far had been

holding the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he cried out

in his old lion voice,- "Up helm! Keep her off round the world!"

  Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud

feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only

through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where

those that we left behind secure, were all the time before us.

  Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could

for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and

strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there

were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we

dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time

or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over

this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway

leave us whelmed.