Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.51

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.. < chapter li 16  THE SPIRIT-SPOUT >

     Days, weeks passed, and under easy
sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising-grounds;
that 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
.. <p 231 >
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,
.. <p 232 >
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
self-same 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 foam-flakes 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
.. <p 233 >
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 repose in his hammock.  Never could
Starbuck forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin
to mark how the
.. <p 234 >
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 eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that
swung from a beam in the ceiling.  Terrible old man!  thought Starbuck with a
shudder, sleeping in this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
.. <p 234 >