Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
Ahab commanded all hands to the mast-heads. When the lookouts reported nothing, he ordered every sail set aloft and alow, then cast loose the life-line that would hoist him to the main royal-mast head. Before he reached his perch, while still climbing, he cried out: “There she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!” The men rushed the rigging to witness the whale they had pursued across half the world. Tashtego claimed he had sighted it the same instant, but Ahab would not yield the moment. The doubloon was his; Fate had reserved it for him alone.
The whale was preparing to sound. Ahab ordered the boats lowered and commanded Starbuck to remain aboard the Pequod. Three boats dropped away, Ahab heading the assault. Fedallah’s sunken eyes held a pale death-glimmer, his mouth working with hideous motion.
The boats sped like nautilus shells across a sea grown impossibly smooth, a noon-meadow of tropical tranquility. Moby Dick’s dazzling hump slid through the water, ringed in finest greenish foam. A shattered lance projected from his back, perch for the white birds that hovered above him. A gentle joyousness invested his gliding—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness that had beguiled and destroyed many hunters before. Not even Jove swimming away with ravished Europa could surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.
Then the fore part of him rose from the water, his whole marbleized body forming a high arch like Virginia’s Natural Bridge. Warningly waving his bannered flukes, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and vanished. The white sea-fowls lingered over the agitated pool he left behind. An hour passed. Ahab stood rooted in his boat’s stern, waiting.
The breeze freshened. Tashtego cried out: “The birds!” In long Indian file, the white birds flew toward Ahab’s boat, wheeling with joyous, expectant cries. Ahab peered into the depths and saw a white living spot uprising with wonderful celerity—two long crooked rows of glistening teeth. Moby Dick’s open mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb. Ahab whirled the craft aside.
But the whale, with malicious intelligence, shot his pleated head lengthwise beneath the hull. He took the bows full within his mouth, the scrolled lower jaw curling into the air. The White Whale shook the cedar craft as a cat shakes a mouse. Ahab seized the jaw with naked hands, striving to wrench it free. The gunwales bent, collapsed, snapped. Both jaws bit the craft completely in twain. Ahab fell flat-faced upon the sea.
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