Chapter CXXX: THE HAT
And now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a
preliminary cruise, Ahab, --all other whaling waters swept --seemed to
have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely
there; now, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and
longitude where his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a
vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had actually
encountered Moby Dick; --and now that all his successive meetings with
various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac
indifference with which the white whale tore his hunters, whether
sinning or sinned against; now it was that there lurked a something in
the old man's eyes, which it was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to
see. As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic,
six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so
Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of
the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so, that all their bodings,
doubts, misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and
not sprout forth a single spear or leaf. In this foreshadowing
interval too, all humor, forced or natural, vanished. Stubb no more
strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more strove to check one. Alike,
joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, and
powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of ahab's iron
soul. like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever conscious
that the old man's despot eye was on them. But did you deeply scan
him in his more secret confidential hours; when he thought no glance
but one was on him; then you would have seen that even as Ahab's eyes
so awed the crew's, the inscrutable Parsee's glance awed his; or
somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it. Such an
added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now; such
ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him;
half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal
substance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some
unseen being's body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For
not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber,
or go below. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned;
his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say --We two watchmen never
rest. Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step
up the deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his
pivot-hole, or exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating
limits, --the main-mast and the mizen; or else they saw him standing
in the cabin-scuttle, --his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if
to step; his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however
motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that
he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching
hat, they could never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes
were really closed at times; or whether he was still intently scanning
them; no matter, though he stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on
the stretch, and the unheeded night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon
that stone-carved coat and hat. The clothes that the night had wet,
the next day's sunshine dried upon him; and so, day after day, and
night after night; he went no more beneath the planks; whatever he
wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for. He ate in the same open
air; that is, his two only meals, -- breakfast and dinner: supper he
never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly grew all gnarled, as
unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still grow idly on at naked
base, though perished in the upper verdure. But though his whole life
was now become one watch on deck; and though the Parsee's mystic watch
was without intermission as his own; yet these two never seemed to
speak --one man to the other --unless at long intervals some passing
unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent spell
seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck crew,
they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one
word; by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest
verbal interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a single
hail, they stood far parted in the starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the
Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each other; as
if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee
his abandoned substance. And yet, somehow, did Ahab --in his own
proper self, as daily, hourly, and every instant, commandingly
revealed to his subordinates, --Ahab seemed an independent lord; the
Parsee but his slave. Still again both seemed yoked together, and an
unseen tyrant driving them; the lean shade siding the solid rib. For
be this Parsee what he may, all rib and keel was solid Ahab. At the
first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard from
aft -- Man the mast-heads! --and all through the day, till after
sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking
of the helmsman's bell, was heard -- What d'ye see? --sharp! sharp!
But when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the
children-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the
monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's fidelity; at
least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt,
even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight
he sought. But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously
refrained from verbally expressing them, however his actions might
seem to hint them. I will have the first sight of the whale myself,
--he said. Aye! Ahab must have the doubloon! and with his own hands
he rigged a nest of basketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with
a single sheaved block, to secure to the main-mast head, he received
the two ends of the downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his
basket prepared a pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the
rail. This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing beside
the pin, he looked round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the
other; pausing his glance long upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but
shunning Fedallah; and then settling his firm relying eye upon the
chief mate, said, -- Take the rope, sir --I give it into thy hands,
Starbuck. Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word
for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured
the rope at last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one
hand clinging round the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for
miles and miles, --ahead, astern, this side, and that, --within the
wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height. When in working
with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in the rigging,
which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is hoisted up
to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these
circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict
charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in
such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different
relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen
of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being
every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a
natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted
sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall
all swooping to the sea. So Ahab's proceedings in this matter were
not unusual; the only strange thing about them seemed to be, that
Starbuck, almost the one only man who had ever ventured to oppose him
with anything in the slightest degree approaching to decision --one of
those too, whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt
somewhat; --it was strange, that this was the very man he should
select for his watchman; freely giving his whole life into such an
otherwise distrusted person's hands. Now, the first time Ahab was
perched aloft; ere he had been there ten minutes; one of those
red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly incommodiously close
round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these latitudes; one of
these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head in a maze of
untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet straight
up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and went eddying again
round his head. But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant
horizon, Ahab seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would
any one else have marked it much, it being no uncommon circumstance;
only now almost the least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of
cunning meaning in almost every sight. Your hat, your hat, sir!
suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who being posted at the
mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though somewhat lower
than his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing them. But
already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes; the long hooked
bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his
prize. an eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to
replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin
would be king of Rome.
But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good.
Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it;
far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the
point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned,
falling from that vast height into the sea.