Amiga Format 57/af057sub.adf//moby.lha/MOBY

Text File | 1994-01-24 | 12KB | 201 lines

  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.
EPILOGUE
  Epilogue

       "AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE"
                                            Job.
  The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?- Because
one did survive the wreck.

  It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he
whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that
bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day
the three men were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped
astern. So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full
sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I
was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached
it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and
ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of
that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till,
gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now,
liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great
buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot
lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed
up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on
a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as
if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with
sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and
picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in
her retracing search after her missing children, only found another
orphan.

                              FINIS