.. < chapter cxxxii 26  THE SYMPHONY >


     It was a clear steel-blue day.  The

firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure;

only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look,

and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells,

as Samson's chest in his sleep.

.. <p 533 >

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,

unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to

and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty

leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled,

murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.  But though thus contrasting within,


     the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one;

it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.  Aloft, like a royal

czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling

sea; even as bride to groom.  And at the girdling line of the horizon, a

soft and tremulous motion --most seen here at the equator --denoted the fond,

throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom

away.  Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm

and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of

ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his

splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven.  Oh,

immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure!  Invisible winged creatures

that frolic all round us!  Sweet childhood of air and sky!  how oblivious were

ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe!  But so have I seen little Miriam and

Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire;

sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that

burnt-out crater of his brain.  Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle,

Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and

sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the

profundity.  But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to

dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul.  That glad, happy air,

that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world,

so long cruel -- forbidding --now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn

neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however

wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her

.. <p 534 >

heart to save and to bless.  From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear

into the sea; nor did all the pacific contain such wealth as that one wee

drop.  Starbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the

side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing

that stole out of the centre of the serenity around.  Careful not to touch

him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there.  Ahab

turned.  Starbuck!  Sir.  Oh, Starbuck!  it is a mild, mild wind, and a

mild looking sky.  On such a day --very much such a sweetness as this --I

struck my first whale --a boy-harpooneer of eighteen!  Forty-- forty--forty years

ago! --ago!  Forty years of continual whaling!  forty years of privation, and

peril, and storm-time!  forty years on the pitiless sea!  for forty years has

Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors

of the deep!  Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent


     three ashore.  When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of

solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness,

which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without

--oh, weariness!  heaviness!  Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! --when

I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before

--and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare -- fit emblem of the

dry nourishment of my soul --when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to

his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts --away,


     whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and

sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage

pillow --wife?  wife? --rather a widow with her husband alive!  Aye, I widowed

that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the

frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand

lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey --more a demon

than a man! --aye, aye!  what a forty years' fool --fool --old fool, has old

Ahab been!  Why this strife of the chase?  why weary,

.. <p 535 >

and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance?  how the richer or

better is Ahab now?  Behold.  Oh, Starbuck!  is it not hard, that with this

weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me?

Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I seem to weep.  Locks

so grey did never grow but from out some ashes!  But do I look very old, so

very, very old, Starbuck?  I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though

I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise.  God!

God!  God! --crack my heart!-- stave my brain! --mockery!  mockery!  bitter,

biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem

and feel thus intolerably old?  Close!  stand close to me, Starbuck; let me

look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better

than to gaze upon God.  By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone!  this

is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye.  No, no;

stay on board, on board! --lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase


     to Moby Dick.  That hazard shall not be thine.  No, no!  not with the far

away home I see in that eye!  Oh, my Captain!  my Captain!  noble soul!

grand old heart, after all!  why should any one give chase to that hated fish!


     Away with me!  let us fly these deadly waters!  let us home!  Wife and child,

too, are Starbuck's --wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow

youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing,

paternal old age!  Away!  let us away! --this instant let me alter the course!

How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to

see old Nantucket again!  I think, sir, they have some such mild blue days,

even as this, in nantucket.  they have, they have.  I have seen them --some

summer days in the morning.  About this time --yes, it is his noon nap now --

the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me,

of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to

dance him again.  Tis my Mary, my Mary herself!  She promised that my boy,

every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of

his father's sail!  Yes, yes!  no more!  it is done!  we head for Nantucket!

Come, my Captain, study out the course,

.. <p 536 >

and let us away!  See, see!  the boy's face from the window!  the boy's hand

on the hill!  But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he

shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.  What is it, what

nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozzening, hidden lord and

master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural

lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on

all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural

heart, I durst not so much as dare?  Is Ahab, Ahab?  Is it I, God, or who,

that lifts this arm?  But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an

errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible


     power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think

thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that

living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this

world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.  And all the time,

lo!  that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea!  Look!  see yon Albicore!  who

put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish?  Where do murderers go,

man!  Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?  But it is

a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it

blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the

slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the

new-mown hay.  Sleeping?  Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the

field.  Sleep?  Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung

down, and left in the half-cut swaths --Starbuck!  But blanched to a

corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.  Ahab crossed the deck

to gaze over on the other side; but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in

the water there.  Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail.

.. <p 537 >

