Kabanata Kabanata 23 · The Lee Shore.

Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded

mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.

When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive

bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her

helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon

the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous

voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another

tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest

things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs;

this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only

say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that

miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give

succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort,

hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our

mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s

direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land,

though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and

through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,

fights ’gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks

all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly

rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!

Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally

intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid

effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the

wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the

treacherous, slavish shore?

But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,

indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite,

than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For

worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the

terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O

Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy

ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!