Starbuck’s Meditation on Ahab
Starbuck stands between the knight-heads, watching both the ship’s tumultuous passage and Ahab lurching along the deck. He reflects privately on the nature of life and destruction, comparing Ahab to a coal fire that burns brightly then wanes to dust. He wonders what will remain of this “old man of oceans” when all his “fiery life” has diminished to merely “one little heap of ashes.”
Stubb’s Comment on Ahab’s Resolve
Stubb responds to Starbuck’s meditation with characteristic irreverence, correcting him that these will be “sea-coal ashes—not your common charcoal.” He recalls hearing Ahab mutter about being dealt cards he must play. Concluding with grim approval, Stubb declares: “Ahab, but thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!”
第一百十九章 The Candles.
Chapter 119 depicts a violent typhoon striking the Pequod in Japanese waters. As the ship loses its sails and is reduced to bare poles, a crew member’s boat is stove in by heavy seas. Stubb responds to the disaster with defiant songs, drawing Starbuck’s rebuke. The captain argues that singing keeps up his spirits, and despite Starbuck’s attempts to restrain him, he continues his jocular ballad about the ocean. When the tempest reaches its peak, luminous flames appear on the yard-arms—the corpusants or St. Elmo’s fire—which the superstitious sailors interpret as an ominous sign. The phosphorescent light illuminates the crew members, including the giant negro Daggoo and the tattooed Queequeg, transforming them into ghostly figures. Starbuck interprets the burning masts as evidence of imminent disaster, while Stubb takes them as a promise of future wealth from the sperm oil they will harvest. The Parsee Fedallah is seen kneeling before Ahab at the mainmast’s base. Ahab seizes lightning rods and confronts the supernatural flames directly, delivering a defiant speech in which he acknowledges the fire’s power while insisting on his own personality and mastery. He kisses the fire as a son would kiss his father, yet maintains his antagonism toward it. The flames leap higher when he speaks, and the harpoon in his boat begins burning with forked fire—a sign Starbuck reads as divine warning against the voyage. Starbuck pleads with Ahab to abandon the hunt and return home, but Ahab extinguishes the burning harpoon with his breath and threatens to kill any sailor who attempts to flee. His words drive the crew to scatter in terror, much as men flee from an isolated tree in a storm because its prominence makes it a target for lightning.
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