Kabanata Kabanata 51 · 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 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, 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

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 Tormentoso, 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

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.*

*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to

the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself

of the course of the ship.

Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this

gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.