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.
Moby Dick lay at a little distance, thrusting his oblong head up and down in the billows, slowly revolving his spindled body in the motion called pitchpoling. Then he swam swiftly round the wrecked crew, churning the water in his vengeful wake. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him. Ahab, half smothered in foam, helpless, his head like a tossed bubble, remained the center of the direful zone. The other boats dared not approach.
From the mast-heads, the Pequod had seen everything. She bore down upon the scene. Ahab rose on a crest and shouted: “Sail on the whale! Drive him off!” The ship’s prows broke the charmed circle and parted the white whale from his victim. The boats flew to the rescue.
Dragged into Stubb’s boat, Ahab lay crushed in the bottom, his bodily strength cracked. Nameless wails came from him. But soon he half rose, asking for his harpoon, counting his men. “The eternal sap runs up in Ahab’s bones again!” he cried. The chase continued from the ship, canvas stacked high against the darkening sky.
Through the day Ahab paced the deck, at every turn passing his wrecked boat lying reversed upon the quarter-deck. Stubb laughed before it; Starbuck called it an omen. Ahab rejected both. The gods would speak outright, not give old wives’ darkling hints. He stood alone among millions, neither gods nor men his neighbors.
Evening came. The spout could no longer be seen. Ahab approached the doubloon in the main-mast and declared it should abide there until the White Whale was dead. Then he placed himself half within the scuttle and stood watch until dawn.
Through the long hours of that anxious night, Ahab had stood alone upon the deck, his unseeing gaze fixed upon the black waters where the white whale had vanished. The crew, exhausted from the day’s calamities, had been sent below one by one, yet none could find rest—the creaking of the hull, the slap of waves against the hull, every sound seemed to speak of the creature that swam somewhere in the surrounding darkness. Fedallah’s prophecy echoed in Ahab’s mind, that he would die when the rope had only one coil left, and now, with one boat already destroyed and his own resolve hardened past the point of reason, the captain watched for the dawn that would bring either his vengeance or his end. When at last the first pale light crept across the horizon, it revealed nothing but empty sea and rolling swells, as though the whale had been swallowed by night itself—yet the men knew, with a certainty born of fate rather than reason, that Moby Dick had merely withdrawn to gather strength for the violence that was to come.
The original text of this work is in the public domain. This page focuses on a guided summary article, reading notes, selected quotes, and visual learning materials for educational purposes.