Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Ishmael descends to the bar-room and greets the landlord pleasantly, showing no malice for the prank of sharing a bed with Queequeg, valuing the humor of the situation.

After focusing solely on rare beefsteaks, Queequeg retires to the public room to smoke his tomahawk-pipe, digesting his meal in quiet solitude as Ishmael heads out for a walk.

Ishmael's initial astonishment at Queequeg fades as he observes the streets filled with actual cannibals and wild sailors, making New Bedford seem stranger than other major seaports.

The chapter concludes with a lush description of the town's summer flora and the legendary beauty of its women, whose bloom is said to rival the roses and musk of Salem.

Ishmael fights through driving sleet to reach the chapel, finding a scattered, silent congregation of isolated sailors and widows sitting apart in their grief.

Father Mapple commands the congregation to condense like a ship's crew, kneels in the pulpit's bows, and offers a devout prayer that seems to come from the bottom of the sea.

Mapple reads a hymn describing Jonah's terror in the whale's belly and his subsequent deliverance, ending with a burst of exultation that swells above the storm outside.

Mapple interprets Jonah's prayer inside the fish not as a plea for pardon, but as grateful acceptance of just punishment, presenting Jonah as a model of true repentance.

The sermon concludes with a reversal from woe to a description of the 'inward delight' found in standing firm for truth against the world, ending with a vision of dying in obedience to God.

Ishmael observes Queequeg alone at the inn, whittling his little negro idol and then counting the pages of a large book with deliberate, childlike regularity.

Despite Queequeg’s initial lack of acknowledgment, Ishmael feels a 'melting' in his heart, drawn to the savage’s lack of civilized hypocrisy and deciding to befriend him.

The chapter ends with the pair in bed, chatting confidentially like a honeymooning couple, solidifying their new and intimate union.

The pair transitions from napping to sitting up in bed, huddling together with their knees drawn up to preserve warmth in the cold room.

Ishmael reflects on the necessity of cold to truly feel warmth, arguing that true comfort relies on the contrast between the snug bed and the arctic air outside.

Ishmael opens his eyes to the dark room, experiencing a momentary revulsion at leaving the self-created darkness of his mind for the physical gloom.

Under the canopy of blue smoke, Queequeg begins to speak of his native island, prompting Ishmael to listen eagerly for the story.

Queequeg is revealed to be the son of a High King from the uncharted island of Rokovoko, who possessed a noble ambition to see Christendom and improve his people.

Queequeg observes the misery and wickedness of sailors in Sag Harbor and Nantucket, concluding that Christians are no better than heathens and deciding to die a pagan.

When asked about returning to his throne, Queequeg feels Christianity has unfitted him for it, choosing instead to sow his wild oats as a harpooneer.

With the story finished, Queequeg embraces Ishmael, blows out the light, and they fall asleep, ready for their shared journey.

The schooner departs down the river. Ishmael reflects on the endless cycle of whaling voyages and feels a sense of liberation leaving the 'turnpike earth' for the sea.

A sudden strain parts the mainsail sheet, sending the boom sweeping wildly across the deck and knocking the greenhorn overboard.

While the crew panics, Queequeg secures the boom and dives into the freezing water to retrieve the drowning man, whom he successfully brings back to the boat.

The crew and Captain apologize to Queequeg. Ishmael pledges his loyalty to Queequeg, who casually remarks that cannibals must help Christians in this joint-stock world.

After a smooth passage, Ishmael describes Nantucket as a barren, sandy outpost completely surrounded by the ocean, contrasting it with the fertile landscapes of the mainland.

Ishmael recounts the traditional story of an eagle stealing an Indian infant, leading the parents to discover the island and find only the child's skeleton in an ivory casket.

Tracing the Nantucketers' progression from digging in the sand for clams to launching a global navy, Ishmael depicts their inevitable rise to conquer the sea.

Ishmael asserts that while other seamen merely traverse or plunder the surface, the Nantucketer alone resides and draws his life from the deep, treating the ocean as his private plantation.

The chapter concludes with a poetic image of the Nantucketer sleeping on the waves, as at home on the water as a prairie cock on land or a gull on the billows.

Following Peter Coffin's convoluted directions, Ishmael and Queequeg argue over starboard and larboard before finally locating the inn.

The inn is marked by two black pots suspended from a mast that resembles a gallows, prompting Ishmael to have superstitious fears about death and Tophet.

They encounter the freckled, yellow-garbed Mrs. Hussey scolding a man, and she promptly asks them to choose between clam or cod for supper.

Misunderstanding the offer, Ishmael tests the kitchen by ordering 'cod' after the clam chowder arrives, resulting in a second, delicious bowl of fish stew.

Ishmael reflects on the overwhelming fishiness of the establishment, from the shell-paved ground to the shark-skin account books and the fish-fed cow.

Queequeg reveals that his god Yojo has commanded Ishmael to choose the ship alone, while Queequeg remains behind to fast and pray.

Ishmael inspects the available ships and chooses the Pequod, captivated by her grotesque and weather-beaten appearance, adorned with the bones and teeth of whales.

Walking away, Ishmael feels a mixture of painfulness, sympathy, and indescribable awe regarding the unseen Captain Ahab.

Ishmael reflects on the universality of religious eccentricity and decides to let Queequeg complete his Ramadan undisturbed.

Queequeg refuses to move or speak. Ishmael covers him with a bearskin but spends a sleepless night anxious about the strange, silent figure in the room.

Queequeg consumes a massive breakfast to make up for the fast, and the two friends head to the ship to sign on.

Captain Peleg refuses to allow the 'cannibal' Queequeg on board without papers, and Captain Bildad demands to know if he belongs to a Christian church.

Pressed for an answer, Ishmael claims Queequeg is a member of the 'First Congregational Church,' explaining that all humanity belongs to this ancient, universal congregation.

Impressed by Ishmael's 'sermon,' Peleg is willing to accept Queequeg but asks for a demonstration of skill. Queequeg throws his harpoon across the deck to hit a tiny speck of tar, proving his worth.

Peleg offers Queequeg the generous ninetieth lay. In the cabin, Queequeg signs the ship's articles not with his name, but by tattooing his unique 'mark' onto the paper.

The theological debate ends as Bildad stalks off to deck, where he obsessively gathers scraps of rope and tar to prevent waste, revealing his parsimonious nature.

A disheveled man with a pockmarked face intercepts Ishmael and Queequeg, demanding to know if they have shipped on the Pequod and inquiring about their souls.

Ishmael attempts to shrug off the man's words as the gibberish of a lunatic, but Elijah insists that what is signed is signed and the fate is sealed.

Before departing, the stranger identifies himself as Elijah. Ishmael and Queequeg dismiss him as a humbug trying to frighten them.

The ship is a hive of activity with new sails, rigging, and provisions being loaded. The crew is ordered to bring their chests aboard, though the departure is delayed by the sheer volume of required stores.

Captain Peleg roars orders from his wigwam while Bildad meticulously checks off items from his long list, ensuring no spare spar or line is forgotten.

The order is finally given that the ship will sail the next day, prompting Ishmael and Queequeg to make an early start for the docks.

As they approach the wharf in the grey dawn, Elijah accosts them, blocking their path and peering between them with unsettling intensity.

As the crew bestirs itself for the morning departure, Ishmael realizes the Captain is already on board, though he remains hidden in his cabin.

After Aunt Charity delivers her final gifts, Peleg and Bildad take charge on deck, ordering the crew to strike the tent and man the capstan while Ahab stays hidden in the cabin.

The ship glides into the freezing Atlantic, encased in ice. Despite the cold and wet, Bildad's hymn about Canaan stirs a sense of hope and pleasant havens in Ishmael.

Separated from the pilot boat, the crew gives three heavy-hearted cheers and the ship steers blindly into the vast, lonely ocean.

Amidst the freezing departure, Ishmael is awed to find Bulkington steering the ship, unable to rest on land despite just returning from a four-year voyage.

Ishmael elevates Bulkington's restlessness to a spiritual truth, asserting that the highest truth and independence are found only in the shoreless, indefinite infinite, akin to God.

Concluding the reflection, Ishmael hails Bulkington as a demigod who chooses to perish in the infinite rather than crawl cravenly to the safe but inglorious land.

Ishmael presents statistics to prove the immense scale of the American whaling industry and cites historical examples of royal and governmental support to validate its importance.

Concluding his defense, Ishmael declares that the whale-ship was his Yale College and Harvard, the source of any potential honor or glory he might achieve in life.

Ishmael justifies the inclusion of a reasonable surmise to bolster his case, suggesting that suppressing such an eloquent possibility would be blameworthy.

By eliminating other known oils such as olive, macassar, or cod-liver, Ishmael deduces that the only substance fitting for a coronation is sweet, unmanufactured sperm oil.

He concludes with a triumphant declaration to the British that whalemen are the indispensable suppliers of the coronation oil for their kings and queens.

Starbuck is described as a lean, enduring Quaker, seemingly built of 'twice-baked biscuit,' possessing an internal vitality that functions like a chronometer in any climate.

The source of Starbuck's caution is revealed to be the traumatic loss of his father and brother to the sea, memories that fuel his superstition and restrain his daring.

The narrator digresses to defend the inherent nobility of man, arguing that true dignity is democratic and god-like, found even in the lowliest workers, and demands reverence for the fall of valor.

Flask, nicknamed 'King-Post' for his stout build, is a pugnacious young man who views whales merely as magnified water-rats, lacking all reverence for their mystic nature.

The three mates are established as the captains of the whaleboats, each paired with a specific harpooneer in a 'Gothic Knight' and squire relationship.

For days after leaving Nantucket, Ahab remains hidden in his cabin, issuing orders through the mates while Ishmael's anxiety grows, fueled by the ragged Elijah's warnings.

On a gloomy morning as the ship rushes southward, Ishmael ascends to the deck and sees Ahab standing on the quarter-deck for the first time.

Ishmael notes Ahab's barbaric white leg, fashioned from a sperm whale's jaw, which he steadies in a hole bored into the deck.

Ahab stands in a singular posture of fixed dedication, looking forward without speaking. His face bears a crucifixion of woe that commands a painful silence from the officers.

The Pequod sails through bright, perfumed spring days near the equator, an environment that seems to act upon Ahab's soul, stirring his restlessness.

Ahab, unable to sleep like the aged, emerges from his cabin each night, viewing the descent as entering a tomb. He usually avoids the quarter-deck to spare the sleeping crew the noise of his ivory leg.

Ahab orders his ivory stool and pipe, seating himself on the weather side of the deck. He is likened to a Norse king upon a throne of narwhale tusks, a monarch of the sea.

As Ahab smokes, he realizes the habit no longer brings peace. He perceives his nervous puffs as 'toiling' rather than pleasuring, and feels the pipe is unsuited to his torn, iron-grey locks.

Deciding that the pipe has lost its charm, Ahab tosses the still-lighted object into the ocean. The fire hisses out as the ship rushes past the sinking bubble.

With the pipe gone, Ahab resumes pacing the deck with a slouched hat and a lurching gait, stripped of the last pretense of calm.

Stubb describes dreaming that Ahab kicked him with his ivory leg. He struggled to kick back, losing his own leg in the process, while rationalizing that a false leg cannot deliver a true insult.

A strange, humpbacked merman intervenes in the dream, turning his back to reveal it studded with marlinspikes. He warns Stubb against kicking and forces him to listen.

The merman argues that being kicked by Ahab's ivory leg is a distinction comparable to being knighted by a queen. He advises Stubb to accept the kicks as honors and never retaliate.

Stubb wakes up convinced the dream has made him wise. He tells Flask to ignore Ahab completely, regardless of what the Captain says.

Ahab suddenly shouts from the quarter-deck, ordering the crew to look sharp for whales and specifically screaming to split their lungs if they see a white one.

Stubb points out the 'queer' nature of the order to Flask, sensing that something bloody is on Ahab's mind. He falls silent as Ahab approaches.

Ishmael reviews the confused and incomplete history of whale study, noting that while many authors have written on the subject, few have seen living whales and fewer still understand the sperm whale.

He declares the Greenland whale deposed and proclaims the great sperm whale as the true king of the ocean, a creature whose life remains largely unwritten.

Ishmael assumes the role of architect to draft a systematization of Cetology, acknowledging the difficulty of classifying such a vast and chaotic subject.

He settles the debate on whether a whale is a fish by siding with tradition over Linnaeus, defining a whale specifically as a spouting fish with a horizontal tail.

The Sperm Whale is identified as the largest and most formidable inhabitant of the globe, as well as the most commercially significant due to the spermaceti found within it.

Ishmael recounts how spermaceti was originally thought to come from the Greenland or Right Whale, and was so scarce it was treated as a rare medicine rather than a fuel.

The name 'Sperm Whale' is explained as a linguistic accident where the name of the product was mistakenly transferred to the source creature, a confusion dealers maintained to enhance value.

Identified as the first whale regularly hunted by man, the Right Whale is valued for its baleen and 'whale oil,' though the latter is considered inferior to spermaceti.

The whale is known by many titles among fishermen, including the Great Whale, the True Whale, and the Greenland Whale, creating obscurity around its identity.

Ishmael rejects the idea that the American Right Whale and the English Greenland Whale are different species, arguing that naturalists create repelling intricacy through inconclusive subdivisions.

The Fin-Back is characterized as a solitary, fast-swimming creature often seen by transatlantic passengers, distinguished by a sharp, dorsal fin that resembles a sundial.

Ishmael elevates the whale's antisocial nature to a mythic level, comparing it to Cain bearing a mark, noting it avoids both its own kind and human pursuit.

He argues that classifying whales by specific features like baleen, humps, or fins is impossible because these traits appear inconsistently across different species, ruining every naturalist's system.

Since internal anatomy is equally unhelpful for sorting, Ishmael asserts that the only practical method is to classify whales by their entire liberal volume—the size-based system he has adopted.

The Hump Back is described as carrying a great pack on its back, leading to nicknames like the Elephant and Castle whale, though its hump is distinct from that of the sperm whale.

While his oil is of little value and he possesses baleen, the Hump Back is distinguished as the most gamesome and light-hearted of all whales, known for creating lively foam and white water.

Sighted only at a distance off Cape Horn, the Razor Back is defined by its retiring nature and the long, sharp ridge of its spine.

Despite not being a coward, the whale refuses to reveal more than its back to observers, rendering it a mystery to both hunters and philosophers.

Described as a retiring gentleman with a sulfur-colored belly, likely acquired from deep dives, this whale is rarely seen and never chased due to its immense speed.

Sightings are too distant to study his features, and only legends remain; Ishma admits he can say nothing true of the creature beyond its existence.

The Folio section ends, and Ishmael introduces Book II, the Octavo group, explaining the nomenclature is based on the book's shape preserving the whale's figure.

Though famous among landsmen for its loud blowing, the Grampus is not always popularly classed as a whale despite possessing the grand distinctive features of the leviathan.

Of moderate octavo size, the Grampus swims in herds and is never regularly hunted, though it yields considerable oil of good quality.

Fishermen regard the appearance of the Grampus as a premonitory sign of the approach of the great Sperm Whale.

Rejecting the vague name 'Black Fish,' Ishmael proposes 'Hyena Whale' due to the creature's voracity and the upward curve of its lips, which creates a perpetual Mephistophelean grin.

Found in all latitudes, this sixteen-to-eighteen-foot whale is distinguished by the peculiar way it displays its hooked dorsal fin, resembling a Roman nose.

Sperm whale hunters capture the Hyena whale when larger prey is scarce, valuing it as a source of cheap oil for domestic use despite its thin blubber.

Described as a left-handed, clumsy-looking creature due to the tusk growing only from the left side of the jaw, the Narwhale's horn is a subject of speculation regarding its use in raking the sea or piercing ice.

The horn was anciently prized as a poison antidote and distilled for fainting ladies; Sir Martin Frobisher famously presented a long horn to Queen Elizabeth, who displayed it at Windsor.

With a milk-white coat dotted like a leopard, the Narwhale yields superior oil but is seldom hunted, remaining mostly in the circumpolar regions.

Little is known to naturalists about this whale, which is the size of a grampus and possesses a savage, Feegee-like nature.

The Killer demonstrates its ferocity by latching onto the lips of the great Folio whales like a leech, worrying them to death.

Though never hunted and its oil unknown, the name 'Killer' is noted as indistinct, as all creatures, including humans and sharks, are killers in their own way.

The Thrasher is distinguished by its powerful tail, which it uses like a ferule to beat the Folio whale while mounted on its back.

Like the Killer, the Thrasher is an outlaw in the lawless seas, shrouded in mystery and rarely hunted.

The Book of Octavo concludes, and Ishmael introduces the Book of Duodecimo, listing the smaller porpoise whales.

Ishmael defends the classification of small, spouting fishes with horizontal tails as whales, despite their lack of hugeness.

Ishmael assigns the name 'Huzza Porpoise' to distinguish this common species, noting its hilarious, crowd-like shoals that swim joyfully before the wind.

The appearance of these vivacious fish delights mariners and is considered a lucky omen, signaling a spirit of godly gamesomeness.

Beyond providing oil and meat, the porpoise yields valuable jaw fluid for jewellers; despite its small size, its spout reveals it as a miniature Sperm whale.

Classified as a pirate and very savage, this porpoise is found only in the Pacific and is somewhat larger than the common Huzza Porpoise.

The creature is fierce enough to battle sharks when provoked, yet despite many attempts, Ishmael has never seen one successfully captured.

The largest porpoise is distinguished by a gentleman-like figure, sentimental eyes, and a 'bright waist' that gives it a mealy-mouthed appearance resembling a meal-bag thief.

Ishmael lists a catalog of half-fabulous whales known only by reputation, inviting future investigators to verify and incorporate them into his system.

Ishmael justifies leaving his cetological system unfinished, comparing it to the Cologne Cathedral and asserting that true grandeur requires the contributions of posterity.

The chapter opens by defining the unique status of the harpooneer, specifically the historical Dutch 'Specksnyder' or Fat-Cutter, who once shared command with the captain over the hunting department.

In the modern American fishery, the harpooneer is a senior officer who socially equals the captain but nominally ranks above the crew, necessitating that he live and eat aft in the cabin to maintain professional distinction.

Despite the communal nature of whaling, the rigid forms of the quarter-deck are preserved to maintain order, with captains often parading with a grandeur that rivals military or imperial authority.

Ahab, though moody and uninterested in shallow pomp, strictly observes these sea customs. He uses the external forms of rank not for their intended purpose, but to mask and entrench his own internal 'sultanism,' transforming naval etiquette into a tool for irresistible dictatorship.

Ishmael philosophizes that intellectual superiority requires paltry external arts—like crowns or titles—to exert practical power over the masses, a principle Ahab embodies to terrifying effect.

The chapter concludes by reflecting that Ahab possesses no outward royal trappings; his grandeur is internal and elemental, plucked from the skies and the deep, existing in the unbodied air of his will.

Dough-Boy announces dinner, prompting Ahab to descend first, followed by Starbuck and Stubb, who observe strict protocol. Flask, the last to descend, briefly dances on deck before adopting a submissive persona to enter the cabin.

Ishmael analyzes the 'witchery of social czarship' where Ahab presides in silence. The mates eat with terrified reverence, treating the meal as a solemn ritual where even the sound of chewing is suppressed.

As the lowest officer, Flask is the last to eat and the first to rise, a scheduling injustice that leaves him perpetually starving. He longs for the days before the mast when he could eat his fill.

After the officers leave, the harpooneers arrive. In stark contrast to the officers' silence, they dine with frantic democracy, terrifying the steward Dough-Boy with their voracious appetites and weapon-sharpening.

The nervous steward, son of a bankrupt baker, is traumatized by serving these 'cannibals,' fearing they might scalp or eat him. He finds relief only when they leave, their bones jingling like scimitars.

The chapter concludes by noting that despite living in the cabin, the officers and harpooneers essentially live in the open air, for the cabin offers no companionship. Ahab is an alien, a Grisly Bear sucking his own paws in the gloom of his soul.

Tracing the practice from ancient Egyptian astronomers and St. Simeon Stylites to modern statues like Napoleon and Washington, Ishmael notes that modern land-based standers are lifeless compared to the active duty of a seaman.

On a whaling ship, the mast-heads are manned from sunrise to sunset. In the pleasant tropic weather, the watch is a sublime, uneventful respite from the world's news and domestic cares.

Ishmael laments the lack of shelter, comparing the precarious perch on the cross-trees unfavorably to the 'crow's-nests' used by Greenland whalers, which Captain Sleet equipped with comforts and a rifle.

Ishmael confesses to neglecting his duty to watch for whales, lost in profound thought. He warns ship-owners against hiring 'Platonists' who seek asylum in the fishery to escape the world.

In the opium-like listlessness of the watch, the young philosopher loses his identity, merging his soul with the infinite ocean until a slip or a sudden movement brings a horrific return to reality and the risk of death.

Ahab emerges from his cabin, pacing the deck with a heavy, rhythmic stride that mirrors the intensity of his singular obsession, unsettling the crew who sense a storm brewing in his demeanor.

Ahab orders all hands aft, including the mast-heads. He whips the crew into a frenzy by asking them routine whaling questions, building their excitement before revealing his true, singular purpose.

Ahab nails a Spanish gold ounce to the mast, offering it to whoever raises the specific white whale that dismasted him. The harpooneers recognize the beast as Moby Dick.

Ahab confesses that Moby Dick took his leg and vows to chase him around the world. He demands the crew join his private war, shifting the business from profit to personal revenge.

Starbuck protests that hunting a brute for vengeance is blasphemous and unprofitable. Ahab counters with his metaphysical view that the whale is a 'pasteboard mask' for a malicious intelligence he must strike through.

Ahab overwhelms Starbuck with a torrent of words, arguing that the crew's bloodlust and the momentum of the hunt leave Starbuck no choice but to comply. Starbuck silently acquiesces, feeling the weight of fate.

Ahab enacts a solemn ritual: he passes grog among the crew, fills the sockets of the harpoons with spirits, and leads the harpooneers in a toast to death for Moby Dick, binding them in an 'indissoluble league.'

Gazing out the stern window, Ahab contemplates the 'Iron Crown of Lombardy' of his obsession, feeling its weight and the split nature of his psyche, which protects him from pain but isolates him from beauty.

He laments that his high perception strips him of the ability to enjoy the world's loveliness, leaving him damned in the midst of Paradise as the sun sets.

Ahab revels in the ease with which he bent the crew to his will, comparing himself to a match that wastes itself to ignite powder, or a cog that fits into all their wheels.

He embraces his madness and the prophecy of his dismemberment, vowing to become both prophet and fulfiller by dismembering the whale that took his leg.

Ahab defies any gods or forces that might oppose him, declaring his soul is grooved to run on iron rails toward his fixed purpose, unable to swerve from the path of destruction.

Starbuck feels his soul is overmatched and 'drilled' out by Ahab's monomania. He recognizes the ineffable cable tying him to the captain, forcing him to obey while hating with a touch of pity.

He laments his position as Ahab's first mate, forced to support a suicide mission. He sees Ahab's tyranny over the crew and hopes God might intervene, yet feels his own heart is too heavy to act.

A burst of revelry from the forecastle highlights the crew's heathen enthusiasm for the hunt. Starbuck contrasts this noise with the silence of Ahab's cabin, seeing the ship as a microcosm of life's horror.

Starbuck envisions the ship as a gay bow dragging a dark, brooding cabin, hunted by wolfish gurglings. He feels the 'latent horror' of existence and pleads for support to fight the grim future.

Stubb concludes that laughter is the wisest answer to all queerness, finding comfort in the belief that everything is predestinated and that Ahab has already fixed Starbuck's fate as well.

He reflects on the 'carcase' of the situation and decides to face whatever comes with a laugh. His mind wanders to domestic thoughts of his wife and a light-hearted song about fleeting love.

Stubb's revelry is cut short by a call from Mr. Starbuck. He acknowledges his superior's authority and the fact that Starbuck likely has his own burdens, before obediently going to attend to his duty.

The watch stands in various attitudes, singing a chorus about Spanish ladies and whales. The mood is initially light and sentimental, though interrupted by the mate's call for the watch.

Sailors from various nations—the Dutch, French, Icelandic, Maltese, and others—banter, complain, and attempt to dance. They are a mix of weary, lustful, and playful, creating a fragmented, noisy atmosphere.

The sky darkens and the wind rises. The sailors' chatter turns to the weather, with some noting the ominous signs. The mood shifts from leisure to tension as the elements begin to threaten.

A confrontation erupts between the Spanish sailor and Daggoo, the African harpooneer, over racial slurs. The crew eggs them on, forming a ring, but the fight is interrupted by the onset of the squall.

The mate orders the crew to reef topsails. The men scramble to their stations in the chaos. Pip, left cowering under the windlass, connects the 'white squall' to the White Whale and prays to the 'big white God' for protection.

Ishmael admits that his own oath was welded to the crew's with a shout, driven by a mystical sympathy and dread that makes Ahab's private feud feel like his own.

Due to the isolation of whaling, news of the White Whale spread slowly. Initially, his ferocity was dismissed as general Sperm Whale danger, but repeated fatal encounters began to shake the hunters' fortitude.

Wild rumors exaggerated the whale's power, suggesting he was ubiquitous and immortal. Whalemen, prone to superstition, began to believe he was a supernatural agent that no weapon could kill.

Stripped of superstition, the whale's physical appearance—his snow-white forehead and hump—and his intelligent malignancy struck fear. He was known to feign retreat only to turn and destroy the boats.

Ishmael describes the specific battle where Ahab, maddened by the whale's destruction of his boats, dashed forward with a knife only to have his leg sheared off by the whale's jaw.

During the homeward voyage, Ahab's physical pain fused with his spiritual anguish, creating a deep-seated lunacy. Though he appeared sane upon return, his madness had only contracted and focused.

Ahab's sanity was subverted entirely to his mad objective. He disguised his condition from the Nantucketers, who even viewed his scar as a qualification for hunting such a monster.

Ishmael reflects on how the diverse, morally enfeebled crew was swept up by Ahab's 'infernal fatality.' He cannot fully explain the psychological mechanism, but acknowledges that he too has abandoned himself to the chase.

Ishmael contrasts the traditional associations of whiteness with beauty, royalty, innocence, and holiness against the intense panic the color inspires when divorced from these contexts.

He cites the polar bear, the white shark, and the albatross as creatures whose 'ghastly whiteness' creates a loathsome or supernatural dread that exceeds their physical danger.

The repulsion felt for the Albino man and the marble pallor of the dead are examined. Whiteness is shown to be the color of ghosts, shrouds, and the Apocalypse, enforcing a nameless terror.

Ishmael explores why the White Tower, the White Mountains, and the city of Lima evoke a stronger, spectral fear than their colorful counterparts, suggesting whiteness represents a fixed, apoplexy of the soul.

Using the metaphor of a colt terrified by the unseen scent of a buffalo robe, Ishmael argues that humans possess an instinctive knowledge of the 'demonism in the world' that whiteness represents.

Ishmael theorizes that whiteness represents the visible absence of color—a 'colorless all-color of atheism'—and the void of the universe. It is the mask of a charnel-house, making the Albino whale the symbol of this cosmic horror.

Under fair moonlight, the crew stands in a silent cordon passing water buckets. The atmosphere is hushed and reverent, broken only by the sound of the ship's movement.

Archy whispers to Cabaco that he hears coughing and sleepers turning over in the after-holds. He insists there is someone hidden below deck who has not yet been seen.

Cabaco mocks Archy's sensitivity, attributing the noises to the biscuits Archy ate for supper. He demands the bucket be passed, ignoring the potential omen.

After the crew's ratification, Ahab retires to his cabin to pore over wrinkled charts and logbooks, tracing courses with a pencil while the lamp's shadows play upon his brow.

Ahab uses his knowledge of tides, currents, and the 'Season-on-the-Line' to predict where the whale might be, treating the hunt as a scientific certainty rather than a chance.

Ahab realizes he missed the specific season for the equatorial Pacific but plans to intercept the whale in the interim, relying on the creature's periodic movements and his own circumnavigation.

Ahab reflects on the whale's unique physical features—his white brow and hump—and his own scalloped fins, convinced that recognition is inevitable and the inescapable nature of his revenge.

Ahab's nightmares and sleepwalking reveal that his obsession has become a separate, autonomous entity within him. His soul flees his body in horror, leaving a formless being driven solely by the will to hunt.

Ishmael cites personal experience of striking the same whale years apart, identified by unique marks and harpoons, proving whales are distinct individuals with specific identities.

He lists renowned whales like Timor Tom and New Zealand Jack, who were widely known for their scars and behavior, attaining a level of celebrity comparable to historical figures.

Ishmael argues that landsmen are ignorant of the true perils of whaling because deaths and disasters often go unreported, leaving the public unaware of the blood spilled for oil.

A detailed account of the sinking of the Essex by a large sperm whale is provided, including testimony that the attack appeared calculated and malicious rather than accidental.

Additional instances are recounted, including the Union and a naval sloop-of-war, to demonstrate that whales possess the strength to stove and sink large vessels.

Ishmael provides narratives of whales colliding with ships and even towing them, emphasizing their immense physical power and occasional deliberate aggression.

The historical account of Procopius is analyzed to argue that a sea-monster destroying Roman ships was likely a sperm whale, proving such behavior has ancient roots.

Ahab recognizes that his single-minded pursuit of Moby Dick risks alienating his crew, particularly Starbuck, whose soul abhors the quest and might rebel without distractions.

To prevent the crew from being paralyzed by the 'full terror' of the voyage, Ahab decides they must have ordinary, temporary employments to keep them healthily suspended for the final hunt.

Ahab understands that the crew's 'sordid' need for cash is a permanent condition. He must allow them to hunt for oil to prevent financial dissatisfaction from turning into mutiny.

Having revealed his private purpose prematurely, Ahab knows he is vulnerable to charges of usurpation. He must maintain his authority by demonstrating competence in the nominal business of the ship.

Ahab resolves to force himself to evince a passionate interest in standard whaling, hailing the mast-heads to keep a sharp lookout for any sign of life, not just the White Whale.

As Ishmael and Queequeg weave the mat, the rhythmic motion induces a trance-like state where Ishmael perceives the loom as Time, the warp as Necessity, and the shuttle as his own Free Will.

Ishmael observes that Queequeg's sword strikes the woof with varying intensity, symbolizing Chance, which interacts with Necessity and Free Will to shape the final fabric of destiny.

The philosophical reverie is shattered by Tashtego's unearthly cry from the cross-trees, announcing the sighting of a school of sperm whales on the lee-beam.

The ship erupts into commotion. Ahab demands the exact time, and the crew prepares to lower the boats, anticipating the whales will surface directly ahead.

Just as the boats are poised to launch, a sudden exclamation draws all eyes to Ahab, who is now surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seem to have materialized from the air.

As the boats are lowered, Ahab's secret crew—led by the Parsee Fedallah—emerges from hiding, shocking the ship's company but failing to halt the launch.

Stubb jokes about the devils to keep his crew rowing, while Starbuck grimly acknowledges the stowaways, deducing Ahab's secret agency in the matter.

Ahab's boat, powered by his tiger-like crew, surges ahead. The chase pauses as the whales sound, leading to a tense silence where officers stand on gunwales to spot the prey.

Tashtego spots the whales again. The boats tear through the water in a thrilling, dangerous pursuit, with Flask in a frenzy and Stubb mocking him from behind.

As Starbuck's boat closes in, Queequeg harpoons a whale, but the iron glances off. Simultaneously, a violent squall strikes, capsizing the boat and separating the crew from the ship.

Swamped and lost in the mist, the men bail uselessly as night falls. Starbuck lights a lantern and hands it to Queequeg, creating a symbol of hope amidst the despairing darkness.

At dawn, the ship looms out of the mist, nearly crushing the swamped boat. The crew is hauled aboard, reunited with the ship that had been searching for tokens of their survival.

Ishmael describes a state of mind where extreme tribulation makes life seem like a vast practical joke, rendering fear and disaster meaningless.

Ishmael questions Stubb and Flask about the dangers of whaling. Their casual acceptance of capsizing and death confirms the insanity of the trade to him.

Recognizing the extreme risks of Starbuck's prudence and the hunt for the White Whale, Ishmael resolves to go below and write his will.

Ishmael enlists Queequeg as his lawyer, executor, and legatee, highlighting their deep bond and the practical necessity of preparing for death.

Having completed his will, Ishmael feels a stone rolled away from his heart. He regards himself as a ghost who has already died, granting him fearless immunity to the voyage's perils.

Stubb and Flask discuss the strangeness of Ahab whaling with his ivory leg, debating the extent of his disability and his refusal to kneel.

The narrative explores the strategic dilemma of whether a captain should risk his life in the hunt, comparing Ahab to Tamerlane and noting the owners would never sanction a maimed man in a boat.

Ahab secretly prepares a spare boat for himself, modifying the thole-pins and sheathing to accommodate his ivory leg, actions that aroused curiosity but were misunderstood as mere personal readiness.

The strange appearance of Ahab's tiger-yellow crew is rationalized by the sailors as typical maritime oddity, allowing the men to accept their presence on board.

Fedallah remains an ominous, muffled figure linked to Ahab’s fate. He is described as a creature from an ancient, ghostly world, suggesting a demonic or preternatural authority over the captain.

Fedallah spots a silvery, celestial jet of water in the moonlight. The sight is so enthralling that the crew, usually fearful of night lowers, instinctively desires to chase it.

Ahab drives the ship forward in pursuit, but the spout vanishes. It reappears intermittently over subsequent nights, always ahead of the ship, luring them on like a phantom.

The crew becomes convinced the spout belongs to Moby Dick. A sense of treacherous dread grows, tempered only by the strangely bland, wearisome weather that accompanies the sightings.

The serene weather breaks as they round the Cape. The ship enters a violent gale surrounded by ominous seabirds, transforming the sea into a scene of anguish and condemnation.

Amidst the storm, Ahab stands silent and motionless on deck for hours, staring into the gale, while the crew secures themselves in bowlines, reduced to practical fatalism.

Starbuck discovers Ahab below decks, asleep in his chair but with eyes fixed on the tell-tale compass, his unremoved hat still dripping with sleet, revealing his obsession persists even in rest.

Ishmael spots the Goney, a bleached and rusted whaler resembling a skeleton. Her crew looks wild and ragged after four years at sea, yet they remain silent as they pass close by.

Ahab attempts to hail the stranger to ask if they have seen the White Whale, but his trumpet falls into the sea and the rising wind prevents him from being heard.

Ahab seizes the moment to shout instructions to the homeward-bound Nantucket ship, redirecting his future mail to the Pacific Ocean and effectively announcing his intention never to return.

As the wakes cross, shoals of small fish that had been swimming peacefully alongside the Pequod suddenly dart away to the stranger ship. Ahab interprets this flight with deep, helpless sadness.

Ahab orders the helm up to continue the voyage. The narrator reflects on the irony of circumnavigation, which leads only back to the start, and the barren mazes of chasing a demon phantom.

Ahab avoids boarding the Albatross not just due to weather, but because he refuses to consort with strangers who cannot provide information about the White Whale.

Unlike merchant ships or men-of-war, whalers have profound reasons to socialize: exchanging letters, sharing intelligence on cruising grounds, and bonding over shared perils.

The chapter contrasts the friendly whaler with the dandified merchant ship, the bowing man-of-war, the hurried slave-trader, and the villainous pirate, highlighting the unique brotherhood of whalemen.

A formal definition is provided: a Gam is a social meeting of two whalers where captains visit each other's ships while crews exchange places in the boats.

The mechanics of a Gam are detailed, focusing on the physical challenge of the captain who must stand in the rocking whale-boat without a seat or tiller, maintaining dignity amidst the buffeting of oars.

Ishmael sets the scene at the Golden Inn in Lima, telling the story to Don Sebastian, Don Pedro, and other Spanish cavaliers who interject with questions and demands for verification.

The Town-Ho develops a leak but continues cruising. The narrative introduces Steelkilt, a wild and noble 'Lakeman' from Buffalo, and Radney, the tyrannical mate who hates him.

Radney provokes Steelkilt by ordering him to sweep the deck, a task meant for boys. When Radney attacks with a hammer, Steelkilt kills him in self-defense, leading to a standoff.

Steelkilt and his allies barricade themselves in the forecastle. After a stalemate, they are tricked into imprisonment below decks, where they endure darkness and starvation.

Steelkilt's allies betray him to save themselves, gagging him and turning him over to the Captain. The three mutineers are hung in the rigging, but Steelkilt whispers a threat that stays the Captain's hand.

Radney, miraculously recovered, attempts to flog Steelkilt but is halted by the Captain. Steelkilt secretly prepares a netted iron ball, planning to murder Radney at the helm.

Moby Dick is sighted, and the crew gives chase despite the secret pact not to. In the confusion, Steelkilt cuts the line at a critical moment, allowing the whale to seize and destroy Radney.

The ship reaches a savage island where most of the crew deserts. Steelkilt later intercepts the Captain seeking help, forces him to swear an oath, and escapes to France, leaving the widow of Radney behind.

The Spanish gentlemen demand proof of the story's truth. Ishmael calls for a priest and a copy of the Evangelists, swearing a solemn oath that the story is true.

Ishmael introduces his intention to eventually paint the true form of the whale, but first seeks to dismantle the false and monstrous pictures that currently populate the world's imagination.

The critique begins with ancient sources, noting that the Hindoo Matse Avatar resembles an anaconda rather than a whale, and Christian artists like Guido and Hogarth create bizarre, armor-plated monsters.

Ishmael mocks 'scientific' attempts, citing Captain Colnett’s whale with a five-foot eye and Frederick Cuvier’s illustration that looks like a squash, proving experts are as blind as artists.

The fundamental reason for these failures is explained: a living whale cannot be hoisted out of the water, and a stranded whale collapses like a wrecked ship, losing its true form.

Even the skeleton offers no true portrait, as the bones lack the flesh and padding that define the whale's shape, leaving the creature essentially unpaintable.

Ishmael reviews the four published outlines of the Sperm Whale, finding Beale's the best but still flawed, and critiques Scoresby's Right Whale drawings for being too small and lacking action.

A detailed analysis of the first French engraving, which depicts a Sperm Whale destroying a boat. Ishmael lauds the 'living and breathing commotion' and the anatomical vitality of the scene despite minor errors.

Analysis of the second engraving showing a Right Whale hunt. Ishmael contrasts the raging foreground 'tumultuous white curds' with the becalmed background and the inert mass of the conquered whale.

Ishmael praises the French genius for capturing action, comparing Garnery's work to the battle scenes at Versailles and contrasting it with the mechanical, lifeless sketches produced by English and American draughtsmen.

Two additional engravings by H. Durand are examined: one of 'oriental repose' showing a calm anchorage, and another of intense activity depicting the cutting-in process and a boat rearing like a horse.

The chapter opens with a crippled beggar on Tower-hill displaying a crude painting of a whale attack that cost him his leg, symbolizing the tangible danger of the fishery.

Ishmael describes the intricate carvings on whale teeth and bone created by sailors, attributing this artistic patience to the 'savage' nature restored in men by long exile from civilization.

The survey moves to wooden carvings in forecastles, brass whale knockers on country doors, and sheet-iron weather-cocks on church spires, noting their varying degrees of artistic faithfulness.

Ishmael identifies the whale in the natural landscape, seeing petrified shapes in rocky cliffs and living profiles in the undulating ridges of mountainous countries.

The chapter culminates in a cosmic vision, tracing constellations like Argo-Navis and Cetus in the night sky, and expressing a desire to ride a whale beyond the mortal sight to see the fabled heavens.

Sailing northeast from the Crozetts, the ship enters endless fields of yellow brit, resembling ripe wheat, where Right Whales feed undisturbed by the whalers.

Right Whales are observed swimming sluggishly through the brit, filtering it through their baleen. Their movement is compared to mowers in a field, though their immense size makes them appear like lifeless rocks.

Ishmael contemplates how different sea creatures are from land animals, noting the lack of 'sagacious kindness' and the presence of sharks, emphasizing the ocean's unsocial and repelling nature.

The ocean is described as an everlasting terror that insults and murders man, destroying ships and crews just as the biblical flood swallowed the world, yet familiarity has dulled man's sense of this awfulness.

The sea is portrayed as a savage force that kills its own inhabitants, dashing whales against rocks and engaging in universal cannibalism, hiding its horrors beneath beautiful azure surfaces.

The chapter concludes with a philosophical analogy: just as the terrifying ocean surrounds the gentle land, the horrors of the half-known life encompass the peaceful, joyous island within the human soul.

While sailing through a serene sea, Daggoo spots a strange, intermittent white mass in the distance, which he initially mistakes for the White Whale breaching.

Driven by a mix of habit and eagerness, Ahab instantly orders the boats lowered upon seeing the white form, leading the chase without hesitation.

The boats converge on the target, which reveals itself not as a whale but as a vast, formless, cream-colored pulpy mass with radiating arms like anacondas.

Starbuck is more shaken by this 'white ghost' than he would be by Moby Dick. Ahab, realizing the mistake, silently turns his boat back to the ship.

Ishmael explains the superstitions surrounding the squid, believed to be the Sperm Whale's sole food source, and connects it to the legendary Kraken of Pontoppodan.

The composition of the whale-line is described, noting the shift from hemp to Manilla rope for strength and aesthetics, and the precise coiling required to prevent fatal accidents.

The arrangement of the line in the tub and the boat is explained, emphasizing the necessity of the loose lower end to prevent the boat from being dragged under by a sounding whale.

Ishmael describes how the line is threaded through the entire boat and around every oarsman, creating a situation where the crew sits amidst deadly coils capable of shearing off limbs.

The psychological state of the whalemen is explored; despite the immediate danger of being 'Mazeppa-ed' by the line, habit allows them to joke and row as if facing certain death with a noose around their necks.

The chapter concludes by expanding the nautical danger into a universal metaphor: all men live enveloped in whale-lines, unaware of the fatal turn of death until it strikes.

The entire crew succumbs to a hypnotic sleep in the stagnant heat, only to be shocked awake by the sudden sight of a whale rolling peacefully nearby.

Ahab orders a silent pursuit using paddles to avoid alarming the whale, but the creature sounds, diving deep and forcing a tense wait for its reappearance.

The whale resurfaces and accelerates, transforming its shape for speed. Stubb orders the crew to row with chaotic energy, initiating a wild, screaming race.

Tashtego harpoons the whale, and the line runs with such force it burns through Stubb’s hands. The boat is towed at a terrifying speed, vibrating through air and water.

As the whale slows, Stubb hurls multiple darts into its flank, turning the sea red with blood. The crew glows with the reflection of the gore amidst the spraying foam.

Stubb delivers a deep, churning lance thrust to the whale's vitals, triggering the creature's death 'flurry' which nearly swamps the boat in boiling spray.

The whale’s heart bursts, spouting clotted gore. Stubb acknowledges the death, noting that both his pipe and the whale's spout are extinguished.

The harpooneer is expected to pull the heaviest oar while shouting at the top of his lungs, a physical demand that leads to exhaustion and a high rate of failure when the strike is finally required.

Upon a successful strike, the boat is thrown into chaos as the harpooneer and boatheader must swap places while the whale begins its run, endangering the crew.

Ishmael argues that the headsman should remain in the bows to both dart and lance, avoiding the fatal fatigue of rowing and ensuring the harpooneer strikes from idleness, not toil.

The crotch is defined as a notched stick holding two harpoons, allowing the harpooneer to snatch the weapon instantly like a rifle from a wall.

The rationale for carrying two irons is explained: to double the chances of holding the whale if the first iron draws out during the drag.

If the whale's violent movement prevents a second strike, the connected iron must still be tossed overboard to avoid disaster, often resulting in fatal accidents.

A loose second iron becomes a lethal hazard, skittishly curvetting about the boat and whale, entangling lines, and remaining a threat until the whale is dead.

Ishmael foreshadows the extreme danger of future scenes where four boats engage a single whale, potentially leaving eight or ten loose irons dancing in the water.

The crew struggles to tow the massive carcass to the ship. Ahab secures the whale but retreats to his cabin, visibly despairing that this death does not advance his monomaniac quest for Moby Dick.

Stubb, flushed with victory, orders a steak cut from the whale. He eats at the capstan amidst a chaotic swarm of sharks feasting on the carcass, creating a hellish banquet atmosphere.

Stubb summons the old cook Fleece and orders him to preach to the sharks to quiet their noise. Fleece delivers a comic, dialect-heavy sermon on self-control, which ultimately fails to silence the voracious fish.

Stubb engages Fleece in a teasing catechism about his age, birth, and culinary skills, asserting the cook must be born again to learn how to properly prepare a whale steak.

Stubb mocks Fleece’s understanding of heaven and salvation, using the cook's anatomy to make a point. He concludes by leaving complex, contradictory orders for future meals before dismissing the grumbling cook.

Historical anecdotes are presented regarding the consumption of whale tongue in France and porpoises in Henry VIII's court, establishing the creature as a former noble dish.

The sheer size and excessive fat content of the whale make it unappetizing to civilized men, though whalers and Esquimaux utilize the blubber and spermaceti in various ways, such as frying biscuits in oil.

A specific description of the sperm whale's brains being cooked as a delicacy leads to a digression on calves' heads and the irony of eating intelligence to gain it.

Ishmael argues that eating a whale by its own light is no worse than civilized butchery, condemning the gourmand who feasts on goose liver while judging the cannibal.

The chapter concludes by pointing out that civilized men use the bones and feathers of the animals they eat to construct the tools of their dining, proving their own complicity.

Stubb sets the anchor-watch after supper. Queequeg and a seaman take the deck, illuminating the water and preparing to defend the massive whale carcass from the sharks.

The mariners use long, razor-sharp whaling-spades to strike at the sharks' skulls. The sheer number of sharks turns the sea into a foamy confusion of mixed and struggling hosts.

In the chaos, the sharks exhibit horrific behavior, snapping at each other's disembowelments and even biting their own bodies, consuming their own entrails repeatedly.

A dead shark is hoisted on deck for its skin, yet it nearly severs Queequeg's hand when he tries to close its jaw, revealing a malevolent life force that lingers in the creature's bones.

Nursing his injured hand, Queequeg dismisses the differences between Fejee and Nantucket gods, concluding that whatever deity created such a monster must be a 'dam Ingin.'

The ship is turned into a shamble on a Saturday night, with the massive cutting tackles—blocks and ropes resembling a bunch of grapes—hoisted to the main-top to prepare for the butchery.

Starbuck and Stubb cut a hole for the heavy blubber hook, and the crew heaves at the windlass. The ship careens dangerously under the strain until the blubber strip snaps free, peeling away in a spiral like an orange rind.

The blood-dripping blubber is hoisted until it grazes the main-top, swaying perilously over the deck. The crew must dodge the massive, swinging 'blanket-piece' to avoid being struck or pitched overboard.

A harpooneer uses a boarding-sword to slice a hole in the swaying mass for a second tackle, then severs the strip completely with precise, desperate lunges to prepare it for lowering.

The work proceeds in a dual, hypnotic rhythm: one tackle hoists a new strip while the other lowers the finished piece into the blubber-room, where hands coil it like serpents amidst the ship's groaning and the men's singing.

Ishmael defends his opinion against whalemen and naturalists, arguing that the thick blubber is the true skin, not the thin, isinglass-like membrane that can be scraped off.

Calculating the oil yield from the blubber of a large Sperm Whale, Ishmael emphasizes the sheer physical enormity of the creature based on the volume of its 'skin' alone.

Ishmael describes the intricate markings on the whale's hide, comparing them to Italian engravings and undecipherable hieroglyphics, while noting the rough scratches likely caused by battles with other whales.

The blubber is likened to a blanket or poncho that insulates the warm-blooded whale, allowing it to thrive in freezing Arctic waters where unprotected men would freeze solid.

Ishmael elevates the whale as a symbol of self-sufficiency, urging man to emulate its ability to maintain its own internal temperature and vitality regardless of the hostile environment.

The tackles release the beheaded whale, which floats away as a colossal, white phantom. The scene is one of violent consumption, with sharks tearing at the flesh and birds diving like poniards.

Ishmael condemns the 'doleful and mocking' nature of the event, where the scavengers act like pious mourners while feasting on the carcass, illustrating the vultureism of the natural world.

Even in death, the whale exerts a power over the world. Its white mass is mistaken for uncharted land by timid sailors, who log it as a dangerous shoal and shun the area for years.

The narrator critiques the law of precedents and the survival of old beliefs, comparing sailors leaping over a phantom shoal to sheep following a leader over a vacuum, exposing the absurdity of unexamined traditions.

The chapter concludes with a reflection on how the whale's body was a terror in life, yet its ghost becomes a source of irrational panic in death, prompting a question about belief in the supernatural.

The narrator details the immense difficulty of beheading a whale, which lacks a neck and requires the surgeon to cut blindly deep into the flesh to sever the spine at a critical point.

Due to its colossal size, the head cannot be brought fully on deck. Instead, it is hoisted against the ship's side, buoyed by the water, dragging the vessel dangerously to one side like Judith holding the head of Holofernes.

As the crew dines, an intense copper calm settles over the sea. Ahab emerges alone, leans over the chains, and prods the suspended head with a spade, treating it like the Sphynx in the desert.

Ahab addresses the venerable, moss-covered head, recounting the horrific tragedies it has witnessed in the deep—lovers sinking, murdered mates, and lost ships—and demands it speak the hidden truths that could make an infidel of the faithful.

Ahab's monologue is shattered by the cry of 'Sail ho!' The news of another vessel transforms his demeanor from brooding intensity to triumphant anticipation, as he interprets the breeze as a spiritual sign.

The Pequod signals the approaching Jeroboam, and Captain Mayhew responds but refuses to come aboard due to a malignant epidemic on his ship, maintaining a strict distance between the vessels.

Stubb identifies a frenzied oarsman as Gabriel, a Shaker who believes he is the Archangel Gabriel. His delirium and threats of divine retribution have given him complete control over the Jeroboam's superstitious crew.

Ahab attempts to question Mayhew about the White Whale, but Gabriel interrupts with frantic warnings of doom. The conversation is further disrupted by the rough sea, which Gabriel interprets as a sign.

Mayhew relates how Macey, the chief mate, defied Gabriel's prohibition and hunted Moby Dick. The whale rose and smote Macey from the boat without touching the others, validating Gabriel's prophecy and cementing his power over the crew.

Ahab discovers a letter in his bag for the late Mr. Harry Macey. When he attempts to pass it to Mayhew, Gabriel intercepts it, declares Ahab is soon to die, and impales the letter on a knife to throw it back at Ahab's feet before fleeing.

Ishmael explains the mechanics of the monkey-rope, which binds him to Queequeg as the harpooneer works on the submerged whale. He reflects on the loss of individual free will and the terrifying reality that one man's mistake can doom the other.

Ishmael expands the specific danger of the rope into a philosophical metaphor for human existence, arguing that all men are connected by invisible cords to the fortunes and errors of their neighbors.

Queequeg works in a frenzy of sharks, protected only by Ishmael's jerks of the rope and the clumsy, hazardous assistance of Tashtego and Daggoo, who slaughter sharks with spades that threaten Queequeg as much as the fish.

After the exhausting labor, a dripping Queequeg expects spirits but is handed tepid ginger water by the steward, a result of Aunt Charity's temperance influence.

Stubb mocks the ginger water as useless fuel for a shivering cannibal and accuses the steward of trying to poison the crew for insurance money. He countermands the captain's implied orders, forces the steward to bring real grog, and hurls Aunt Charity's ginger-jub into the sea.

Despite the low esteem for Right Whales, the crew pursues one to balance the ship. The whale nearly smashes the boats and ship in a maelstrom before being killed, its blood attracting a frenzy of sharks.

While securing the whale, Stubb and Flask discuss Fedallah. Stubb asserts that Fedallah is the devil, citing his age, his hidden tail, and his mysterious influence over Ahab, whom he intends to swindle.

Stubb boasts that he is not afraid of the devil. He details a plan to grab Fedallah by the neck, wrench his tail off at the capstan, and sell it as an ox whip, thereby docking the devil of his power.

The Right Whale is hoisted on the larboard side to counterbalance the Sperm Whale on the starboard. The narrator uses this physical balancing act to metaphorize the intellectual struggle between opposing philosophies like Locke and Kant.

As the ship strains under the twin burdens, Fedallah is seen calmly eyeing the Right Whale's head and comparing its wrinkles to the lines in his own hand, standing within Ahab's shadow.

Comparing the two heads, the narrator notes the mathematical symmetry and imposing dignity of the Sperm Whale, particularly the 'grey-headed' appearance that signifies age and experience, which the Right Whale lacks.

The whale's eyes are placed far back on the head, preventing it from seeing directly ahead or behind. This separation creates two distinct fields of vision with a blind void in the middle, implying a brain capable of simultaneous, contradictory perceptions.

The ear is described as minute and almost invisible, differing between the species. The narrator reflects on the paradox of the whale sensing the world through such small channels, arguing that mental subtlety matters more than physical aperture.

The crew canters the head to inspect the mouth, finding it deceptively beautiful. The lower jaw, however, is likened to a terrifying portcullis of teeth, which sometimes hangs loose in living, dispirited whales.

The massive jaw is hoisted aboard like an anchor. Queequeg and the other harpooneers act as dentists, using tackles and spades to wrench out the forty-two teeth, after which the bone is sawn into slabs for commercial use.

The Right Whale's head is likened to a shoemaker's last or a gigantic shoe, lacking the symmetry of the Sperm Whale. It features a barnacled crown and a massive, sullen lower lip that yields significant oil.

Entering the mouth through a hare-lip fissure, the narrator describes the interior as resembling a wigwam lined with hundreds of baleen plates. These 'blinds' filter food and are historically used for fashion, though their utility is now in decline.

The arrangement of baleen is compared to the pipes of a great organ, with the tongue serving as a soft carpet. The tongue is noted for being fat and fragile, yielding a specific amount of oil.

Summarizing the anatomical differences, the narrator interprets the expressions of the dying heads. The Right Whale is seen as a Stoic with practical resolution, while the Sperm Whale resembles a Platonian indifferent to death.

The front of the whale's head is described as a dead, blind wall of vertical, boneless mass. It lacks sensory organs and is encased in a substance tougher than iron, likened to a pavement of horses' hoofs.

Comparing the head to the protective bumpers used between ships, the narrator suggests the whale's head acts as a massive, elastic buffer. He hypothesizes that the internal lung-celled honeycombs may connect to the air, allowing for atmospheric distension that adds to the ram's power.

The narrator combines the physical impregnability of the head with the immense driving power of the whale's body. He asserts that this force is so great that the whale could theoretically sever continents, and only those who confront such 'clear Truth' can truly comprehend it.

The head is divided into two quoins: a lower bony section and an upper unctuous mass. This upper mass is further subdivided into the 'junk' and the 'Case,' the latter being the reservoir for spermaceti.

The 'junk' is described as a honeycomb of oil-filled fibers. The 'Case' is likened to the Heidelburgh Tun, holding the purest spermaceti, which crystallizes upon exposure to air and is highly prized.

The interior of the Case is lined with a pearl-colored membrane. The narrator calculates the tun's depth at over twenty-six feet, emphasizing the massive scale of the oil reservoir.

The decapitation process requires extreme caution to avoid rupturing the spermaceti magazine. The head is hoisted high, creating a complex rigging of ropes, in preparation for the critical tapping operation.

Tashtego climbs onto the suspended whale head and uses a long pole to guide a bucket deep into the 'Tun' to scoop out spermaceti. The process continues until the reservoir is nearly emptied.

In a sudden accident, Tashtego loses his footing or grip and plunges headfirst into the oily depths of the whale's head, disappearing from sight while the crew watches in horror.

As Daggoo attempts to reach Tashtego, the massive tackle holding the head fails. The head tears loose, swings violently, and then drops into the sea, dragging the buried Tashtego down with it.

Queequeg dives overboard and chases the sinking head. Using his sword, he cuts a hole in the casing and drags Tashtego out by his hair, hauling him to safety just in time.

The narrator explains why the head sank: emptied of its buoyant oil, the remaining heavy tendinous walls had greater specific gravity than water. He reflects on the 'sweet' death Tashtego nearly faced, buried in spermaceti.

Ishmael acknowledges that no scientist has yet dared to analyze the whale's face, comparing the task to reading the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar. Despite his lack of qualifications, he resolves to attempt a physiognomical reading of the Leviathan.

The Sperm Whale is described as physiognomically anomalous because it lacks a proper nose. Ishmael argues that while a noseless statue is hideous, the whale's sheer magnitude transforms this absence into an added grandeur, removing any indignity from its appearance.

The full front view of the whale's head is presented as sublime and god-like. Unlike human foreheads that reveal thoughts, the whale's brow is a blank, pleated firmament that conveys only doom and inscrutable power, lacking distinct features like eyes or a mouth.

Ishmael identifies the whale's genius as lying in its 'pyramidical silence' and lack of a tongue. He suggests that ancient cultures would have deified the whale above other tongueless beasts, potentially exalting it to the highest seat of the gods.

The chapter concludes with the assertion that the whale's brow is an unreadable hieroglyphic. Ishmael admits that even the greatest linguists cannot read the true nature of faces, leaving the whale's 'awful Chaldee' brow as a terrifying, insoluble mystery.

The whale's skull is described as a massive fortress concealing a brain no larger than a human's, buried twenty feet deep behind the spermaceti. Ishmael notes that to the casual observer, the spermaceti itself appears to be the seat of intelligence.

Ishmael asserts that the living whale presents a 'false brow' to the world, making phrenological reading of the head a delusion. The true brain is invisible and protected, much like an inner citadel.

When the skull is unloaded and viewed from the rear, it bears a striking resemblance to a human skull. Ishmael interprets the lack of 'self-esteem' and 'veneration' bumps as signs of the whale's exalted, inhuman potency.

Ishmael critiques phrenologists for ignoring the spine, proposing that a man's character is better read in his backbone. He celebrates his own spine as the staff of his flag, suggesting structural integrity reflects spiritual nobility.

Applying the spinal theory to the whale, Ishmael highlights the enormous size of the spinal canal and cord, which connects directly to the brain and maintains a massive girth. He argues this spinal magnitude compensates for the small brain.

Ishmael identifies the whale's prominent hump as the external sign of a massive vertebra. He designates this hump as the 'organ of firmness or indomitableness,' predicting the crew will learn the truth of this trait.

Captain Derick De Deer of the Jungfrau approaches the Pequod not in friendship, but out of necessity. He begs for lamp oil, revealing his ship is 'clean' (empty) and his crew has been left in darkness.

As Derick prepares to strike, the Pequod's three harpooners—Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo—simultaneously dart their irons over the German's boat. The collision spills Derick and his men into the sea, securing the prize for the Pequod.

The whale sounds deep, dragging the boats perilously close to capsizing. When it surfaces, exhausted and bleeding from non-valvular wounds, the crew surrounds it. Flask strikes a 'bunch' on the whale's flank, causing a jet of blood that goads the whale into a frenzy, capsizing Flask's boat before the whale dies.

While securing the body, the crew discovers ancient weapons embedded in the flesh: a corroded harpoon and a stone lance head, hinting at the whale's immense age and unknown history.

The whale's body begins to sink with immense weight, dragging the Pequod over on its side. The ship groans under the strain, and the chains cannot be pried loose. Queequeg uses a hatchet to sever the fastenings, righting the ship just in time.

As the Pequod recovers, the Jungfrau is seen chasing a Fin-Back, a fast species often mistaken for the Sperm Whale but impossible to catch. The German ship and its crew disappear in a hopeless pursuit.

Ishmael asserts that the deeper he researches whaling, the more impressed he is by its antiquity and honor. He expresses pride in belonging to a profession that includes so many demi-gods and heroes.

Perseus is identified as the first whaleman, noted for slaying the sea monster to save Andromeda. Ishmael emphasizes the 'knightly' nature of the kill—done for rescue rather than oil—and cites the physical evidence of the monster's skeleton in ancient Joppa.

Ishmael argues that St. George's dragon was actually a whale, citing biblical texts where whales and dragons are synonymous. He claims that fighting a land reptile would be less glorious, and that artistic depictions are inaccurate due to the ignorance of the times.

Ishmael declares the whale to be the true guardian of England, suggesting that Nantucket whalemen are more entitled to the Order of St. George than the knights themselves, as they possess the true courage to face the leviathan.

Hercules is claimed as an 'involuntary' whaleman due to being swallowed by a whale. Ishmael then draws a parallel to the prophet Jonah, cementing the biblical connection to the trade.

Ishmael reaches the apex of his argument by recounting the Hindu legend of Vishnoo. He describes the god incarnating as a whale to dive to the ocean floor and retrieve the sacred Vedas needed to recreate the world.

The chapter concludes with a triumphant listing of the fraternity—Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo—asserting that no other club can boast such a roster of grand masters.

Ishmael introduces the skepticism of some Nantucketers, specifically Sag-Harbor, regarding the Jonah story. He compares this doubt to ancient skepticism of Hercules, implying that doubt does not negate fact.

Sag-Harbor doubts a man could survive gastric juices. Ishmael rebuts with various learned theories: that Jonah hid in a dead whale, or swam to a ship named 'The Whale', or clung to a life-preserver mistaken for a whale.

Sag-Harbor argues it is impossible for a whale to transport Jonah from the Mediterranean to Nineveh in three days, as the distance is too great and the rivers too shallow.

Ishmael suggests the whale could have traveled via the Cape of Good Hope. He dismisses the logistical impossibility by citing a Portuguese priest who viewed this route as a magnification of the miracle.

Ishmael condemns Sag-Harbor's skepticism as foolish pride and impious rebellion against the clergy. He cites the enduring belief of Turks and the existence of a Mosque built in Jonah's honor as final proof of the story's truth.

Ishmael announces his intent to celebrate the whale's tail—a less celestial subject than antelope eyes or exotic birds, but worthy of poetry. The ironic humility establishes the chapter's tone: reverent attention to the overlooked and monstrous.

Detailed description of the tail's dimensions, its triune layered structure (compared to Roman masonry), and the way the whale's entire muscular system converges into this organ. The tail emerges as the point where the leviathan's 'measureless force' concentrates—capable, theoretically, of annihilation.

A philosophical turn: real strength enhances rather than impairs beauty. Ishmael cites sculpted Hercules, Goethe's corpse, and Michelangelo's God the Father as examples where robustness creates aesthetic power. The whale's tail embodies this principle—its 'appalling beauty' arises from titanic force moving with infantile ease.

A chance comparison between tail and trunk should not imply equality. The mightiest elephant is but a terrier to Leviathan; the trunk but a lily stalk to the tail. The whale's flukes can hurl entire boats into the air like a juggler's balls. A footnote adds curious similarities in spouting behavior.

Ishmael deplores his inability to express the tail's full significance. Hunters have called its mystic gestures akin to Free-Mason signs—intelligent communication. But dissection yields only surface knowledge: 'I know him not, and never will.' The chapter closes with biblical allusion: the whale seems to say, 'Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, but my face shall not be seen.' Yet even the back parts cannot be fully made out—and the whale has no face at all.

Ishmael surveys the strategic straits between Sumatra and Java—a natural rampart unguarded by forts but haunted by Malay pirates—while Ahab plots his course through Oriental seas toward the final rendezvous with Moby Dick.

After empty seas near Java Head, lookouts descry an immense caravan of sperm whales—thousands swimming in crescent formation through the straits, their spouts rising like the chimneys of a metropolis.

The Pequod crowds sail after the whales, but Tashtego spots Malay pirates emerging from ambush in the rear. Ahab paces the deck between the monsters ahead and the bloodthirsty pursuers behind, through the same gate leading to vengeance and deadly end.

The pirates are outrun; boats launch as the wind dies. The whales rally, then suddenly become 'gallied'—paralyzed with panic, swimming in aimless circles. Queequeg strikes a whale that bolts into the herd's heart, dragging the boat into delirious peril among crazed monsters.

The tow-line draws them into the innermost calm—a smooth lake where cows and calves swim fearlessly about the boat like household dogs. Gazing into transparent depths, they witness nursing mothers and an infant still tethered by umbilical cord, the sea's subtlest secrets divulged.

A whale maddened by a cutting-spade tangled in its lines crashes through the calm, wounding its own comrades. The herd contracts in terror; the boat is jammed between vast black bulks, escaping by desperate oar-work and losing only Queequeg's hat.

The herd clumps together and flees with augmented speed. The boats pick up drugged stragglers and Flask's killed whale, but most escape—illustrating the fishery's saying: the more whales, the less fish. The captured whales will be taken by other craft than the Pequod.

Beyond the vast armadas, smaller bands of twenty to fifty whales are sometimes encountered. These schools divide by sex: female harems and all-male bands of young bulls.

Almost universally, a solitary whale proves ancient. Like moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature herself—the best of wives, though she keeps moody secrets.

A closing contrast reveals the sexes' character: strike a forty-barrel bull, and his comrades flee; strike a female, and her companions swim around her with every token of concern—sometimes lingering until they too are taken.

When several ships cruise together, a whale may be struck by one vessel, escape, and be captured by another. Without some universal law, the most vexatious and violent disputes would arise among fishermen.

An old English law decrees that of any whale captured on the coast, the King must have the head and the Queen the tail. The division is like halving an apple—no intermediate remainder. The law remains in force.

The Duke's claim is delegated from the Sovereign. On what principle does the Sovereign originally possess this right? Plowdon supplies the reason: the whale belongs to King and Queen 'because of its superior excellence.' This has ever been held a cogent argument.

Why should the King have the head and the Queen the tail? The lawyer William Prynne explains that the tail supplies the Queen's wardrobe with whalebone. But whalebone is in the head, not the tail—a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer. An allegorical meaning may lurk.

The whale and the sturgeon are styled royal fish by English law writers, both royal property under certain limitations. By inference, the sturgeon too must be divided—the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head, perhaps on some presumed congeniality.

And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in law. The chapter closes on a note of withering irony: the 'reason' in law is the reason of power, clothed in the absurdities of learned commentary.

Stubb reflects that the dried-up whale may contain something worth more than oil: ambergris. He resolves to try for it and heads for the quarter-deck to seek permission—or at least opportunity.

Stubb sounds the Guernsey-man and finds he detests his captain—a conceited ignoramus, a former Cologne manufacturer on his first voyage. The mate has no suspicion about ambergris. Together they concoct a plan: the mate will interpret Stubb's words as he pleases, and Stubb will utter whatever nonsense comes uppermost.

The Frenchman's boats tow the ship away; Stubb benevolently tows the lighter whale in the opposite direction, slacking out an unusually long tow-line. A breeze springs up. The Pequod slides between the Frenchman and Stubb's whale.

Amid the stench of death, a fortune in perfume. The chapter closes on the irony: what the ignorant captain abandoned as worthless contained what Stubb sought—but even Stubb's cunning must yield to Ahab's relentless purpose.

Ambergris was so important to commerce that in 1791 a Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons. Its precise origin remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned.

The two substances are distinct. Amber is hard, transparent, brittle, odorless—used for pipe-mouthpieces and beads. Ambergris is soft, waxy, highly fragrant—used in perfumery, pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, pomatum. The Turks cook with it and carry it to Mecca; wine merchants flavor claret with it.

That the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay—is this nothing? Ishmael summons St. Paul on sowing in dishonor and raising in glory, Paracelsus on what maketh the best musk, and the strange fact that Cologne-water in its rudimental stages is the worst of ill-savors.

All this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler. In a voyage of four years, she may not consume fifty days in boiling out. The oil, once casked, is nearly scentless. Whales are not creatures of ill odor; whalemen cannot be detected by the nose.

The whale cannot be otherwise than fragrant, enjoying high health, taking abundance of exercise. The motion of a sperm whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What shall the sperm whale be likened to for fragrance? To the famous elephant, jewelled and redolent with myrrh, led out to honor Alexander the Great.

Pip was assailed by yells and execrations. Stubb cursed him officially, then gave wholesome advice: Stick to the boat. But cases will happen when Leap from the boat is still better. Then he dropped all advice: Stick to the boat, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up. A whale would sell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama.

The thing is common in that fishery. And in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment befell myself.

That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the Pequod's side. All the cutting and hoisting operations were regularly gone through, even to the baling of the Heidelburgh Tun.

Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, you would have almost thought you were standing in some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.

In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet—this is his usual lot.

But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps—old bottles and vials—to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He hunts for his oil to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.

Already has it been related how the great leviathan is descried from the mast-head, chased over the watery moors, slaughtered in the valleys of the deep, towed alongside and beheaded, condemned to the pots. But now it remains to conclude by rehearsing the romantic proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into the hold—where once again leviathan returns to his native profundities, sliding along beneath the surface as before; but alas! never more to rise and blow.

While still warm, the oil is received into six-barrel casks. While the ship pitches and rolls in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and headed over, perilously scooting across the slippery deck like landslides. Hammers rap round the hoops—for now, ex officio, every sailor is a cooper. At length the last pint is casked, the great hatchways are unsealed, and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. The hatches are replaced and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.

One day the planks stream with blood and oil; great rusty casks lie about; smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself. But a day or two after, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue—the decks never look so white as just after an affair of oil. From the ashes of burned scraps, a potent lye is made. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks with buckets and rags. The soot is brushed from the rigging. All implements are cleansed and put away.

The crew proceed to their own ablutions, shift from top to toe, issue to the immaculate deck fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland. With elated step they pace the planks, humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, fine cambrics; propose to mat the deck, take tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked mariners of oil and bone and blubber were little short of audacity. Away, and bring us napkins!

Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage—and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!

Ahab was wont to pace his quarter-deck, pausing at each spot, strangely eyeing the particular object before him. At the binnacle his glance shot like a javelin at the compass needle; at the mainmast the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted gold coin, wearing the aspect of nailed firmness, dashed with a certain wild longing.

The doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked from the heart of gorgeous hills. Though nailed amidst rustiness of iron bolts and verdigris of copper spikes, it preserved its Quito glow. Every sunrise found it where the sunset left it—set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end. The mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman, wondering whose it would be at last.

On its round border: REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. Three Andes' summits—from one a flame, a tower on another, on the third a crowing cock. Arching over all, a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra.

There's something egotistical in mountain-tops and towers. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the courageous, undaunted, victorious fowl, that too is Ahab. All are Ahab. This round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which like a magician's glass mirrors back his own mysterious self. The sun enters the sign of storms, the equinox. From storm to storm! Born in throes, 'tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs.

The old man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing. A dark valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity. In this vale of Death, God girds us round; the sun of Righteousness shines a beacon and a hope. Yet the great sun is no fixture; at midnight we gaze for him in vain. The coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely.

Stubb reads the zodiac as the life of man in one round chapter. Aries begets us; Taurus bumps us; Gemini is Virtue and Vice; Cancer drags us back; Leo gives fierce bites; Virgo is our first love; Libra weighs happiness and finds it wanting; Scorpio stings us in the rear; Sagittarius shoots arrows; Capricornus tosses us headlong; Aquarius drowns us; Pisces—we sleep. The sun goes through it every year and comes out alive and hearty. Jolly's the word for aye!

I see nothing here but a round thing made of gold. Whoever raises a certain whale, this belongs to him. It's worth sixteen dollars—that's nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won't smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars. Here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out.

If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of these signs. The horse-shoe sign is opposite the gold—and the horse-shoe sign is the lion, the roaring and devouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee.

Queequeg compares notes, looks at his thigh bone, thinks the sun is in the thigh or calf or bowels. He don't know what to make of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers.

The ghost-devil makes a sign to the sign and bows himself. There is a sun on the coin—fire worshipper, depend upon it.

I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look. They are all bats; I'm a crow. Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon, and they are all on fire to unscrew it. But unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence? When aught's nailed to the mast it's a sign that things grow desperate. Old Ahab! the White Whale; he'll nail ye! God goes 'mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us!

Ahab hails a ship showing English colours: Hast seen the White Whale? The stranger captain, a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured man of sixty, reclines carelessly in his boat's bow. He holds up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a mallet. Man my boat! cries Ahab, impetuously.

In the excitement, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never stepped on board any vessel but his own. The strange ship lacked the mechanical contrivance of the Pequod. The great swells lift the boat high, then drop it halfway to the kelson. Ahab found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again, hopelessly eyeing the changeful height he could hardly hope to attain. Every untoward circumstance from his mishap invariably irritated him. The officers swung tastefully-ornamented man-ropes, not bethinking them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use their sea bannisters.

The strange captain cried: I see, I see! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle. They had had a whale alongside a day or two previous; the massive curved blubber-hook was still attached. This was lowered to Ahab, who slid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook—like sitting in the fluke of an anchor—and gave the word. Soon he was swung inside the bulwarks and landed upon the capstan head.

With his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced. Ahab put out his ivory leg, and crossed the ivory arm like two sword-fish blades. Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!—an arm and a leg!—an arm that never can shrink, d'ye see; and a leg that never can run. Where did'st thou see the White Whale?

The White Whale, said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm toward the East—there I saw him, on the Line, last season. And he took that arm off, did he? Ahab asked. Aye, he was the cause of it. Boomer tells the tale: a pod of whales, a bouncing great whale with a milky-white head and hump, all crows' feet and wrinkles. It was he! cried Ahab. Harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin. Aye, aye—they were mine—my irons, cried Ahab, exultingly. The whale's tail came down like a Lima tower, cutting the boat in two. The barb of the second iron caught Boomer just below the shoulder and bore him down. Thank the good God, the barb ript its way along the flesh—clear along the whole length of my arm—came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated.

Dr. Bunger, ship's surgeon, tells his part: a shocking bad wound. Sat up with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet—Drinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till he couldn't see to put on the bandages, interrupts Captain Boomer. The wound grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it came. The ivory arm is the captain's work, not mine. Bunger exposes a bowl-like cavity in his skull—the captain tried to knock my brains out with that club-hammer once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. He was born with it, says Boomer.

What became of the White Whale? now cried Ahab, impatiently. After he sounded, we didn't see him again. Did'st thou cross his wake again? Twice. But could not fasten? Didn't want to try to: ain't one limb enough? What should I do without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows.

Bunger jokes: give him your left arm for bait to get the right. No, thank ye, Bunger, said the English Captain. He's welcome to the arm he has, since I can't help it, and didn't know him then; but not to another one. No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, and a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?—glancing at the ivory leg. He is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all a magnet!

Bunger, stoopingly walking round Ahab, snuffing like a dog: this man's blood—bring the thermometer!—it's at the boiling point!—his pulse makes these planks beat! He takes a lancet from his pocket. Avast! roars Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks. Man the boat! Which way heading? Good God! cries the English Captain. What's the matter? He was heading east, I think.—Is your Captain crazy? whispering Fedallah. But Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to take the boat's steering oar.

In a moment Ahab was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla men were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood upright till alongside of the Pequod.

Ishmael boarded her once at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the forecastle. It was a fine gam—they were all trumps, every soul on board. They flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came, all hands were called to reef topsails, so top-heavy they had to swing each other aloft in bowlines. The beef was fine—tough, but with body in it. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible. The Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack fellows all.

Why was it that the Samuel Enderby, and some other English whalers, were such famous, hospitable ships—passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing? The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is matter for historical research. The English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching plenty to eat and drink. As a general thing, the English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler.

Enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the decanter.

How is it that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb deliver lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea? Can you land a full-grown whale on your deck for examination? A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone—the privilege of discoursing upon the frame-work of leviathan.

I confess that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far beneath the skin of the adult whale. Nevertheless, I have been blessed with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. A small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his poke or bag. Think you I let that chance go, without breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that young cub? And for exact knowledge of the bones in their gigantic, full grown development, I am indebted to my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides.

Years ago, attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, Ishmael was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque at his retired palm villa at Pupella—a sea-side glen not far from Bamboo-Town, his capital. King Tranquo, gifted with a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought together whatever rare things the more ingenious of his people could invent—carved woods, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes.

Chief among the natural wonders was a great Sperm Whale, found dead and stranded after an unusually long raging gale, his head against a cocoa-nut tree. When the vast body had been stripped of its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun, the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it. The ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebrae carved with Arsacidean annals; in the skull the priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again sent forth its vapory spout. Suspended from a bough, the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword that so affrighted Damocles.

It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses; the trees stood high and haughty; the earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it. Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!—pause!—one word!—whither flows the fabric? The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened. Amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging—a gigantic idler! Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.

When with royal Tranquo Ishmael visited this wondrous whale, he marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an object of vertu. He marvelled more that the priests should swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro he paced before this skeleton—brushed the vines aside—broke through the ribs—and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many winding colonnades and arbours. Cutting a green measuring-rod, he once more dived within the skeleton. The priests perceived him taking the altitude of the final rib: Dar'st thou measure this our god! A fierce contest rose among them; they cracked each other's sconces with their yard-sticks—and seizing that lucky chance, Ishmael quickly concluded his own admeasurements.

In this matter, Ishmael is not free to utter any fancied measurement he pleases. There are skeleton authorities to test his accuracy. A Leviathanic Museum in Hull, England; the museum of Manchester in New Hampshire; at Burton Constable in Yorkshire, Sir Clifford Constable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale. Sir Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout—like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him in all his bony cavities. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.

The skeleton dimensions Ishmael shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from his right arm, where he had them tattooed; as in his wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as he was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of his body to remain a blank page for a poem he was then composing, he did not trouble himself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.

According to a careful calculation, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet in its fullest circumference, will weigh at least ninety tons. Reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants. Think you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman's imagination?

In length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two feet; so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have been ninety feet long. In the whale, the skeleton loses about one fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet, his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less than a third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals.

To Ishmael this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine, resembled the hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks. The ribs were ten on a side. The first was nearly six feet long; they increased to the fifth, which measured eight feet and some inches; then diminished to the tenth, which spanned five feet and some inches. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay footpath bridges over small streams.

Ishmael was struck anew: the skeleton of the whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest Tranque rib occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in depth—at least sixteen feet. Yet the corresponding rib measured but little more than eight feet. This rib conveyed only half the true notion of the living magnitude. Where he now saw but a naked spine, all had once been wrapped round with tons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. For the ample fins, but a few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank.

How vain and foolish for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.

The spine, with a crane, piled its bones high up on end, looks much like Pompey's Pillar. There are forty and odd vertebrae in all, not locked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire. The largest is in width something less than three feet, and in depth more than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white billiard-ball. Still smaller ones had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play.

From his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial folio. Think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.

Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise. It now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary. I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous lexicographer's uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author like me.

One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my credentials as a geologist: in my miscellaneous time I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. I desire to remind the reader, that while in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in the Tertiary formations seem the connecting links between the antichronical creatures, and those whose remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark. All the Fossil Whales hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period.

Detached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their bones and skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals, been found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Among the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, disinterred in 1779 in the Rue Dauphine in Paris; and bones disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's time. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some utterly unknown Leviathanic species.

By far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous slaves took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones being taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed species. A significant illustration of the fact that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and pronounced it one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence.

When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the whale's; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs exist after all humane ages are over.

Not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the stereotype plates of nature; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah, some fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins, and dolphins. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was cradled.

Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity of the whale, as set down by the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller. Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. They keep a Whale's Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This Rib is said to have lain there a hundred Years. Their Historians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the Base of the Temple. In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.

Ishmael poses a double inquiry concerning the Leviathan: whether in the long course of his generations he has degenerated from the original bulk of his sires, and whether he can long endure so wide a chase and so remorseless a havoc.

Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.

The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the Samuel Enderby of London had not been unattended with some small violence to his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And when after gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman, the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and wrench, that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy.

And, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his pervading, mad recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not been very long prior to the Pequod's sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured.

Nor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all the anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.

Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged. With many other particulars concerning Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some, why it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the sailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself away with such Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead. That direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluseness. And not only this, but to that timid circle the above hinted casualty—remaining, as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab—invested itself with terrors, not entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that, through their zeal for him, they had all conspired to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others.

But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures;—he called the carpenter. And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him supplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which had thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful selection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured. This done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that night; and to provide all the fittings for it, independent of those pertaining to the distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.

The opening frames humanity in cosmic perspective—individuals appear wondrous, but in mass they seem mere duplicates. The carpenter enters as an exception: humble, yet distinctly singular, no copy of any other man.

Like all sea-going carpenters, he has mastered collateral trades, but the Pequod's demands have made him singularly expert. Over years in distant seas, he has learned to address countless mechanical crises with unhesitating proficiency.

His vice-bench becomes the theater for manifold skills. Vignettes accumulate: filing belaying pins, building a pagoda cage from whale bone, painting constellations on oars, pulling teeth. He meets every demand, practical or whimsical, with ready expertise.

A darker note emerges. His very readiness reveals an impersonal stolidity that shades into the universe's own indifference. He treats human parts as raw materials, men as machines—a detachment indistinguishable from the world's eternal silence.

A lifetime of wandering has worn away all outward clingings, leaving him an unfractioned integral. He works not by reason or instinct but by spontaneous literal process—a pure manipulator, a Sheffield knife of a man, opened and used as needed.

The final turn: beneath the mechanical exterior persists an unaccountable life-principle, a subtle something that has abided sixty years. His body is a sentry-box, and within, a soliloquizer keeps watch—talking always to stay awake.

Alone at his vice-bench, the Carpenter grumbles through clouds of bone dust, sneezing as he files the ivory joist. The work is straightforward—a mere shinbone—but he wants to finish it properly. He anticipates Ahab's arrival to check the length, muttering about the peculiar demands of working in dead lumber.

Ahab arrives with sardonic greeting: 'Well, manmaker!' The leg is measured, and Ahab tests the vice's grip with evident satisfaction—he craves something in this slippery world that can hold fast. The Carpenter warns of broken bones; Ahab dismisses the concern, drawn to the tool's unyielding grasp.

Ahab's attention shifts to the blacksmith at his forge. The myth of Prometheus animating men with fire strikes him as deeply significant: what is made in fire belongs to fire, and so hell becomes probable. The soot flying, the fierce red flame—all suggest creation's dark underside.

In darkly comic flight, Ahab orders an artificial man: fifty feet high, chest like the Thames Tunnel, legs with roots, arms thick through the wrist, no heart, brass forehead, a quarter-acre of brains. Eyes to see outward? No—a skylight to illuminate inward. The Carpenter receives this impossible order with bewildered silence.

The scene's central revelation: Ahab will still feel his lost leg when he mounts the new one. Two legs to the soul where one appears to the eye. The Carpenter has heard of this phenomenon—dismasted men still pricked by their old spar. Ahab confirms it with uncanny precision: where the Carpenter feels tingling life, there Ahab feels his phantom limb.

From phantom limb, Ahab spirals into metaphysical terror. How does one know an invisible, thinking presence isn't standing precisely where one stands? In one's most solitary hours, are there eavesdroppers? And if his crushed leg still smarts, might not the Carpenter feel hell's fiery pains forever, without a body? The Carpenter fumbles for a reply; Ahab cuts him off.

Ahab turns to leave, soliloquizing on the bitterness of dependence. Proud as a Greek god, yet indebted to this blockhead for a bone to stand on. He curses mortal inter-indebtedness—he would be free as air, yet is bound in the world's ledgers. He fantasizes dissolving himself down to a single vertebra, escaping the flesh he owes for.

Alone again, the Carpenter resumes his work, reflecting on Ahab's queerness—Stubb's one-word diagnosis. He thinks of the captain's jaw-bone wife, his driven legs, the bone legs worn out by the cord. This leg looks like a real one filed down to the core. Tomorrow Ahab will stand on it, take altitudes. Chisel, file, sand-paper—the work continues.

Routine pumping reveals oil mixed with water—the casks have sprung a leak. Starbuck descends to report the crisis, finding Ahab bent over charts of the Japanese islands, his new ivory leg braced against the table, tracing old courses with a pruning-knife. The collision between practical necessity and obsessive purpose is set.

Ahab's initial response is contemptuous dismissal. When Starbuck persists, Ahab reveals the deeper wound: he is himself all aleak, his soul the true leaky vessel. The metaphor extends—leaks within leaks, a foundering spirit no one can find or plug in life's gale. He refuses to halt the voyage for mere oil.

Starbuck appeals to the owners' interest. Ahab erupts: let them outyell typhoons from Nantucket beach. He rejects Starbuck's prating about owners as if they were conscience. The only real owner is the commander; Ahab's conscience rides in the ship's keel. Absolute authority against subordinate duty.

Starbuck dares a strangely respectful defiance—moving deeper into the cabin, reddening, cautious yet firm. A better man might overlook in Ahab what he would resent in a younger, happier one. He entreats understanding. Ahab's command of "On deck!" meets Starbuck's "Nay, sir, not yet."

Ahab seizes a loaded musket and levels it at Starbuck. One God over earth, one Captain over the Pequod. For an instant Starbuck seems struck by the muzzle-flash itself. He masters his fury, rises half-calm, and delivers his parting thrust: Ahab has outraged him, but the warning is not to beware Starbuck—it is to beware himself.

Left alone, Ahab murmurs admiration: Starbuck waxes brave yet obeys. The warning lodges—"Ahab beware of Ahab—there's something there." He paces the cabin with the musket as staff, iron-browed, until the plaits of his forehead relax. He returns the gun to the rack and goes on deck.

On deck, Ahab speaks low to Starbuck—acknowledging his worth—then orders the crew to furl sails and up Burtons to break out the hold. The narrator cannot say whether honesty or prudence compelled the yield; perhaps fear of disaffection in his chief officer, perhaps some flash of recognition. The orders are executed.

In calm weather the crew excavates the ship's lower tiers, hoisting ancient casks into daylight until the decks choke with stores and the hollow hull echoes like catacombs. The corroded, weedy puncheons suggest a buried age—Noah's flood recovered. The ship reels top-heavy, vulnerable to any squall, while far below the harpooneer works in darkness.

Queequeg's fever rises from the very labor that sustains the ship. Crawling amid hold-slime in woolen drawers, he catches a chill that collapses into mortal illness. Within days he lies wasted in his hammock, nothing left of him but frame and tattooing—yet his eyes grow fuller, taking on a strange softness that suggests an immortal health no sickness can touch.

The crew has given him up. But Queequeg, facing death, makes one request: a coffin shaped like the dark canoes of Nantucket, recalling his native custom of sending warriors to float toward the starry archipelagoes where sea and heaven interflow. He cannot endure the thought of burial at sea—tossed to sharks in his hammock. A keel-less canoe-coffin will carry him down the dim ages.

The carpenter receives his orders with indifferent promptitude, chalking the dying man's dimensions with professional accuracy. From dark lumber cut in the Lackaday islands he builds the coffin, driving the last nail and planing the lid. When the crew protests its presence on deck, Queequeg commands the box brought to him—dying men must be indulged in their final tyranny.

Queequeg inspects his coffin with deliberate attention, then arranges his effects within: harpoon iron, paddle, biscuits, water flask, a bag of hold-earth, sailcloth pillow. He asks to be lifted inside, settles himself with Yojo clasped to his chest, and calls for the lid to close. His composed face visible through the open head-piece, he murmurs approval and signals to be returned to his hammock.

Pip appears at the coffin's side, tambourine in hand, sobbing. He begs Queequeg to seek the missing Pip in the sweet Antilles, then his madness swells into a wild funeral march—Queequeg dies game!—that spirals into self-loathing as Pip condemns his own cowardice. Starbuck sees in these ravings a heavenly voucher. Throughout, Queequeg lies with closed eyes, dreaming.

Having made every preparation for death, Queequeg suddenly rallies. He has remembered a duty ashore left undone; he has changed his mind about dying. To live or die is a matter of sovereign will—mere sickness cannot kill a man who resolves to live. Within days he stretches, yawns, springs into his boat and poises his harpoon, pronounced fit for the fight.

The coffin becomes a sea-chest. Queequeg carves its lid with grotesque figures copied from his own tattooing—that hieroglyphic system inscribed by a prophet of his island, a complete theory of heaven and earth written on living skin. He carries a riddle he cannot read, a parchment whose mysteries will moulder unsolved. Ahab, observing him, cries out at the devilish tantalization of the gods.

The Pequod passes the Bashee isles and emerges into the vast Pacific. Ishmael expresses profound personal gratitude, feeling his youthful longing for this ocean finally answered by the sight of a thousand leagues of blue rolling eastward.

Perth's portable forge remains lashed to the foremast, besieged by headsmen and harpooneers needing their weapons altered or repaired. An eager circle watches his every sooty movement, yet no impatience or complaint escapes him. Silent, slow, solemn—bowing over his chronically broken back—he hammers as if toil were life itself, the heavy beating of the iron the heavy beating of his heart.

A peculiar yawing in the old man's walk has provoked the crew's curiosity. Yielding at last to their importunity, he reveals the wretched fate that brought him here: a bitter winter midnight, a desperate search for shelter, and the loss of both feet to frostbite. From this confession unfolds the five-act tragedy of his life.

He had been an artisan of famed excellence, with a youthful wife, three blithe children, a house and garden, a church in a grove. But a burglar slid into his happy home under cover of darkness—and the blacksmith himself had ignorantly conducted the thief into his family's heart. The Bottle Conjuror: upon the fatal cork's opening, the fiend shrivelled up his home.

The hammer's blows grew fewer and fainter. The wife sat frozen at the window; the bellows fell; the forge choked with cinders. The house was sold; the mother descended into churchyard grass; her children followed twice over. The houseless, familyless old man staggered off a vagabond in crape, his grey head a scorn to flaxen curls.

Death seems the only desirable sequel, but suicide carries guilt. To death-longing eyes, the ocean spreads forth its plain of unimaginable terrors and new-life adventures—a life more oblivious than death. The thousand mermaids sing from infinite Pacifics: come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without intermediate death; bury thy gravestone and come.

Hearkening to these voices from East and West, at sunrise and fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responds: Aye, I come! And so Perth went a-whaling—launching into the region of the strange Untried, the immense Remote, the Watery, the Unshored.

Days of mild weather and long hours chasing whales with little success create a hypnotic rhythm. Adrift on gentle swells, the men experience dreamy quietude—a tranquility that invites them to forget the tiger heart beneath the ocean's velvet paw, the remorseless fang hidden within beauty.

The stillness transforms perception: the sea feels like flowery earth, the distant ship moves through imagined prairie grass rather than waves. In this mystic mood, the boundary between reality and illusion dissolves, forming 'one seamless whole' where the weary might briefly touch something immortal.

The soothing scenes touch even Ahab, unlocking secret treasuries within him—yet his presence corrupts what it contacts. His breath tarnishes the golden keys. Where others might roll in spiritual clover, Ahab cannot sustain the calm; the drought of his earthly obsession prevails.

Life weaves calms with storms inextricably. There is no final harbor, no steady progress through life's stages—only an eternal cycling through infancy, youth, doubt, and manhood's unresolved 'If.' The soul is an orphan seeking a father whose secret lies buried in the grave.

Gazing into the same luminous sea, Starbuck murmurs of bridal loveliness, willing faith to oust fact and memory—he believes. Stubb leaps up in the same light, swearing he has always been jolly, erasing his own history with cheerful denial. Both men choose illusion over truth, each in his own way.

The Bachelor approaches dressed for celebration—streamers flying from her mastheads, colors displayed from every line, a whale-boat suspended stern-down and a jawbone hanging from her bowsprit. She has wedged her final cask and bolted her hatches; her cruise is complete, and she sails among the fleet in vainglorious triumph before turning toward home.

Where other ships have found nothing, the Bachelor has prospered absurdly. She has bartered away provisions to make room for more oil, stowing casks in cabins and on deck, dining off an oil-butt for a table. The crew has caulked and filled every container aboard—chests, boilers, coffee-pots, even the sockets of harpoon irons. Only the captain's pockets remain empty, reserved for his self-satisfied hands.

Drums thunder from the forecastle; crewmen pound on try-pots stretched with fish skin. Mates dance with Polynesian women on the quarter-deck while fiddlers play from a boat suspended aloft. Men tear down the try-works, hurling brick and mortar into the sea with Bastille-like fury. The captain stands above it all, master of the spectacle.

The two ships cross wakes, their captains embodying opposed destinies: one radiant with things accomplished, the other dark with things yet to come. The Bachelor's commander hails Ahab with raised glass. Ahab's only question is of the White Whale.

The Bachelor's captain has heard of Moby Dick but dismisses him as myth; he urges Ahab aboard, promising to lift the gloom from his brow. Ahab calls him fool and declares the essential opposition: the Bachelor is full and homeward-bound, while he is empty and outward-bound. He orders sail set against the wind.

The ships part—one running cheerily before the breeze, the other fighting it. The Pequod's crew gazes after the Bachelor with grave, lingering looks the revelers never notice. Ahab watches from the taffrail, turning a small vial of Nantucket soundings in his hand: the sound of home, sealed in glass, carried into the void.

The Pequod, long adroop, catches a rushing breeze from fortune's favor. The day after encountering the jubilant Bachelor, whales appear and four are killed—one by Ahab himself. Success has come at last, as if the Bachelor's luck were contagious.

The afternoon's crimson fight ends in stillness. Floating in the sunset sea, both sun and whale seem to die together, the rosy air filled with a sweetness like vesper hymns drifting from distant convent valleys. The violence of the hunt dissolves into elegiac beauty.

Ahab sterns off from his kill and watches the whale's final moments from his boat. The scene soothes him, but only deepens his gloom. What holds him is the dying whale's strange gesture: the slow, steadfast turning of its head toward the sun—a spectacle that conveys wondrousness unknown before.

Ahab reads the whale's sunward turn as an act of worship: the dying creature pays homage to fire, faithful vassal of the sun. Yet death reverses the gesture—no sooner does life expire than the corpse whirls about, facing some other way. The sun calls forth life but gives it not again.

The reversal speaks to Ahab of the 'dark Hindoo half of nature'—the sea-queen who builds her throne of drowned bones and speaks truly in typhoon and burial calm. From this infidel power Ahab draws a lesson: the whale's vain striving confirms a darker faith, prouder for its acceptance of death's dominion. He is buoyed by the breaths of once-living things now dissolved into water.

Ahab hails the sea forever: born of earth, suckled by the waves, he claims the billows as his foster-brothers. The wild fowl finds rest in the eternal tossings; so too does Ahab find his true home not on land but in the unresting waters.

The four whales killed that evening lie scattered—one to windward, one to leeward, one ahead, one astern. Three are secured before dark, but the windward whale must wait for morning. Ahab's boat stays beside it through the night, a waif-pole thrust into the spout-hole, a lantern flickering over the dead bulk and the midnight waves.

The crew sleeps, but Fedallah crouches in the bow, watching sharks circle the whale and tap the cedar planks with their tails. The air fills with a sound like the moaning of unforgiven ghosts over the Dead Sea—spectral, shuddering, ancient.

Ahab wakes face to face with the Parsee, the two of them seeming the last men in a flooded world. He has dreamed again of hearses. Fedallah reminds him of the prophecy: before Ahab can die on this voyage, he must see two hearses on the sea—one not made by mortal hands, one of American wood. Ahab scoffs that such a sight will never come.

Fedallah vows that even at the last, he will go before Ahab as pilot. Ahab presses the logic: if Fedallah dies first, he must appear again to guide Ahab further. The old man reads these pledges as proof he will slay Moby Dick and survive.

Fedallah's eyes glow like fireflies in the dark as he offers one more pledge: only hemp can kill Ahab. The captain laughs in derision—hemp means the gallows, and he is far from any scaffold. He declares himself immortal on land and sea.

The two fall silent, united in their uncanny knowledge. Grey dawn comes, the crew stirs from the boat's bottom, and by noon the dead whale is brought to the ship. The night's prophecies hang unspoken over the day's work.

The season for the Line draws near. Each day the crew watches Ahab's glances aloft, the helmsman ostentatiously handling his spokes, the mariners standing ready at the braces, all eyes fixed on the nailed doubloon. At last the order comes: the ship will point her prow for the equator.

Near high noon in the Japanese sea, Ahab seats himself in his hoisted boat to take his daily observation. The sun blazes with insufferable splendor over the glassy ocean. Through colored glasses he sights the solar fire, waiting for the precise meridian. Below him on deck, Fedallah kneels with upturned face, watching the same sun through half-hooded eyes, his wild expression subdued to an earthly passionlessness.

The observation taken, Ahab calculates his latitude on his ivory leg. But the answer only sends him into reverie. He looks up at the sun and demands more: the quadrant tells him where he is, but not where he is going. The sun must be eyeing Moby Dick at this very instant—Ahab's gaze meets the same solar eye that even now beholds the White Whale on the unknown side of the world.

Gazing at the quadrant's cabalistical contrivances, Ahab denounces it as a babies' plaything. The world brags of its cunning, yet it can only show the pitiful point where one happens to be—not where a single drop of water will be tomorrow. He curses science, curses all that casts men's eyes aloft to heaven when God made their glances level to earth. He dashes the quadrant to the deck, tramples it underfoot, and renounces it forever: only the level compass and dead-reckoning shall guide him now.

As Ahab tramples the instrument with live and dead feet, Fedallah's face betrays two expressions: a sneering triumph meant for Ahab, a fatalistic despair meant for himself. He rises unseen and glides away. The awestruck crew clusters on the forecastle until Ahab, pacing troubledly, shouts the order: the yards swing round, the ship wheels toward the equator, her three masts poised like the Horatii on a single steed.

Starbuck watches Ahab lurch along the deck and thinks of a coal fire burning down to dumbest dust—all that fiery life reduced at last to a little heap of ashes. Stubb counters: sea-coal ashes, not common charcoal. He has heard Ahab mutter that destiny thrusts these cards into his hands and swears he must play them. Ahab acts right: live in the game, and die in it.

Starbuck grasps the storm's significance: the gale blows from the east, the very course Ahab has sworn to follow toward Moby Dick. The mate sees a chance for salvation—the same wind that hammers them could drive them homeward around the Cape of Good Hope. To windward lies blackness and doom; to leeward, a light that is not lightning.

Fedallah kneels at the mainmast's base, head bowed away from Ahab. The captain seizes the lightning-rod links and stands before the triple flames, addressing the fire spirit directly. He declares that he once worshipped it as a Persian, was burned in the sacrament, and now knows defiance as the only true worship. Even blinded by the flash, he claims his will against the fire's power.

Ahab's harpoon catches the pale fire, burning like a serpent's tongue. Starbuck seizes the captain's arm, pleading that God himself opposes this voyage—ill begun and ill continued—and urging him to turn homeward while they still can. The panic-stricken crew moves toward the braces, raising a half-mutinous cry.

Ahab dashes down the lightning links, snatches the burning harpoon, and waves it among the crew like a torch, threatening to transfix any man who tries to abandon ship. He declares their oaths to hunt the White Whale as binding as his own, then extinguishes the flame with a single breath—a gesture of absolute fearlessness. The sailors retreat from him in terror, as men flee a lightning-marked tree in a hurricane.

Starbuck approaches Ahab at the helm with urgent concerns. The band is working loose and the lee lift is half-stranded. He asks permission to strike the yard. Ahab refuses: 'Strike nothing; lash it.' When Starbuck protests—'Sir!—in God's name!—sir?'—Ahab dismisses him. Starbuck then reports the anchors are working loose and asks to bring them inboard. Ahab again refuses: 'Strike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything.'

Ahab scorns Starbuck's caution, feeling himself mistaken for 'the hunch-backed skipper of some coasting smack.' He declares that 'loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud.' He calls it cowardice to send down brain-trucks in tempest time. The storm's roar aloft he would find sublime, did he not know 'that the colic is a noisy malady.'

Flask challenges Stubb's changed tune. Didn't Stubb once say that whatever ship Ahab sails in should pay extra insurance, as though loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stubb admits he may have changed his mind along with his flesh. But he deflects: supposing they are loaded with powder and lucifers, how could the lucifers catch fire in this drenching spray? Flask himself is soaked through—'Aquarius, or the water-bearer.' The Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees: 'Here are hydrants, Flask.'

Stubb turns to the lightning rods. What's the difference between holding a mast's lightning-rod in a storm and standing by a mast without one? No harm comes to the rod-holder unless the mast is first struck. Not one ship in a hundred carries rods. He mocks Flask: 'I suppose you would have every man go about with a small lightning-rod running up the corner of his hat, like a militia officer's skewered feather.' Any man with half an eye can be sensible.

Stubb reflects on the anchors they are lashing down. 'Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again. Tying these two anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man's hands behind him.' He wonders whether the world is anchored anywhere—if so, she swings with an uncommon long cable. The work done, he jokes about long-tailed coats and cocked hats shedding water in storms.

Mid-jest, Stubb's tarpaulin blows overboard. 'Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad.' The comic deflection closes the exchange—Stubb's humor persisting even as the storm claims his gear.

Tashtego works alone at the main-top-sail yard, passing new lashings around it. Thunder crashes around him in the darkness. His muttered refrain—'Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What's the use of thunder?'—gives voice to a sailor's grim endurance. He wants rum, not thunder. The brief scene isolates one man against the storm's vast noise, his small complaints swallowed by the gale.

During the typhoon's violence, the man at the jaw-bone tiller is repeatedly hurled to the deck. The compass needles spin at every shock—a sight that hardly anyone can behold without unwonted emotion. The ship is a tossed shuttlecock to the blast.

After midnight the typhoon abates. Starbuck and Stubb cut away the shivered remnants of the jib and topsails—they go eddying to leeward like the feathers of a storm-tossed albatross. New sails are bent and reefed. The helmsman watches the compass and sees a good sign: the foul breeze becomes fair. The yards are squared to the crew's joyful song. The evil portents seem falsified.

In compliance with Ahab's standing order to report any decided change at any hour, Starbuck goes below—however reluctantly and gloomily. He pauses before Ahab's door. The cabin lamp swings fitfully, casting fitful shadows. A humming silence reigns though the elements roar outside. The loaded muskets in the rack shine against the forward bulkhead. Out of Starbuck's heart there strangely evolves an evil thought.

Starbuck lifts the musket Ahab once pointed at him—the one with the studded stock. His hands shake though he has handled many deadly lances. It is loaded, powder in the pan. He thinks: 'I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and doom—that's fair for Moby Dick.' He recalls Ahab's refusals—to strike spars, to use lightning-rods, to heed the quadrant. Shall this crazed old man drag a whole ship's company to doom?

Starbuck levels the musket at the door. Ahab's hammock swings within; his head is this way. 'A touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.—Oh Mary! Mary!—boy! boy! boy!' But if he does not act, to what unsounded deeps may Starbuck's body sink with all the crew? 'Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall I?'

From out of Ahab's tormented sleep come these words hurtling, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak. The leveled musket shakes like a drunkard's arm against the panel. Starbuck seems wrestling with an angel.

Starbuck turns from the door and returns the musket to its rack. He meets Stubb on deck: 'He's too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I must see to the deck here.' The moment passes. Starbuck has chosen not to act—but the choice haunts.

The not-yet-subsided sea rolls in slow billows. The invisible sun is known only by the spread intensity of his place; the sea is a crucible of molten gold. Ahab stands in enchanted silence, watching the sun's rays ahead when the ship pitches forward, and astern when she settles by the stern. He exults: 'Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!'

A counter-thought reins Ahab back. He rushes to the helm, demands the heading. 'East-sou-east, sir,' says the frightened steersman. 'Thou liest!' Ahab smites him. 'Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?' Every soul is confounded—the phenomenon had blinded them by its very palpableness. Ahab thrusts his head into the binnacle: the compasses point East, but the Pequod is infallibly going West.

Before wild alarm can spread, Ahab laughs rigidly: 'I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our compasses—that's all.' The magnetic energy of the needle is one with the electricity of heaven. Lightning can annihilate a needle's loadstone virtue, leaving it no more useful than a knitting needle. The needles are exactly inverted. Ahab orders the course changed. The supposed fair wind was only juggling them.

Ahab walks the deck in rolling reveries. His ivory heel slips on the crushed copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he dashed down the day before. 'Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet.' He calls for a lance, a top-maul, and the smallest sail-maker's needle.

Ahab knocks the steel head from the lance. He has the mate hold the iron rod upright, then hammers the blunted needle upon it—magnetizing it through induction, or perhaps merely augmenting the crew's awe. He suspends the needle by thread over the compass-card. It quivers, spins, then settles. 'Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!'

One after another the crew peers into the binnacle, and one after another they slink away. Only their own eyes could persuade such ignorance. Starbuck had looked away. In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, Ahab stands revealed in all his fatal pride—master even of the compass that would have betrayed him.

The log and line have hung untouched for most of the voyage—rains, spray, sun, and wind have rotted them. But Ahab's mood seizes him. His quadrant is gone; he remembers his frantic oath about the level log and line. The ship sails plungingly; astern the billows roll in riots. 'Forward, there! Heave the log!' The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman come to obey.

The Manxman holds the reel high and eyes the line. 'Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have spoiled it.' Ahab answers: 'Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee? Thou seem'st to hold.' He asks where the Manxman was born. 'In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.' Ahab plays on the name: 'Here's a man from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man.'

The log is heaved. The coils straighten out astern; the reel begins to whirl. The towing resistance makes the old reelman stagger. 'Hold hard!' Snap—the overstrained line sags in a long festoon; the tugging log is gone. Ahab: 'I crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend all.' He orders a new log made and the line mended.

As the line is hauled in, Pip appears—mad, raving. 'Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip's missing.' He thinks they've fished him up. 'A hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off—we haul in no cowards here.' The Manxman seizes him: 'Peace, thou crazy loon. Away from the quarter-deck!' Ahab advances: 'Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?'

Ahab looks into Pip's vacant eyes. 'Who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to sieve through!' Pip babbles—bell-boy, ship's-crier, reward for Pip the coward. Ahab answers: 'There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be Pip's home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy; thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings.'

Pip feels Ahab's hand—'velvet shark-skin.' 'Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by.' He asks that Perth rivet their hands together. Ahab answers: 'Nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here.' He leads Pip away: 'I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor's!'

The Manxman watches them go. 'There go two daft ones now. One daft with strength, the other daft with weakness.' He looks at the dripping end of the rotten line. 'Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a new line altogether.' The chapter closes on the old man's practical judgment—while above, something stranger than navigation has passed between Ahab and the broken boy.

The Pequod sails south-eastward by Ahab's levelled steel, her progress determined by his log and line. Through unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, impelled by unvarying trade winds over monotonously mild waves—all seems strangely calm, as if preluding some desperate scene. The ship draws near the Equatorial fishing-ground, the deep darkness before the dawn.

In the pre-dawn dark, the watch is startled by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly—like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of Herod's murdered Innocents—that all stand transfixed. The Christian crew say mermaids and shudder; the pagan harpooneers remain unappalled. The grey Manxman declares the sounds are voices of newly drowned men. Ahab, hearing of it at dawn, hollowly laughs: seals, he explains, that have lost their dams or cubs. But the crew's superstitious feeling about seals—human-looking faces, peculiar tones—only deepens the omen.

At sunrise a man goes from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore—perhaps not yet half-waked. A cry is heard, a rushing, and looking up they see a falling phantom in the air; looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the sea. The life-buoy is dropped from the stern, but no hand rises to seize it. The sun has shrunken the cask; it slowly fills and sinks, following the sailor to the bottom. The first man of the Pequod to mount the mast on the White Whale's own ground is swallowed up in the deep.

Few think of the larger meaning at the time. The crew is not grieved as a portent; they regard it not as foreshadowing evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged. They know now the reason of those wild shrieks the night before. But the old Manxman says nay. The lost life-buoy must be replaced; Starbuck is directed to see to it.

No cask of sufficient lightness can be found. In the feverish eagerness of the approaching crisis, all hands are impatient of any toil but what is directly connected with the final end. They are about to leave the stern unprovided when Queequeg hints a hint concerning his coffin. 'A life-buoy of a coffin!' cries Starbuck, starting. 'Bring it up; there's nothing else for it,' he says after a melancholy pause. 'Rig it, carpenter.'

The carpenter asks if he should nail down the lid, caulk the seams, pay over with pitch—mimicking each motion with his hand. 'Away! what possesses thee to this?' cries Starbuck. 'Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and no more.' He goes off in a huff. The carpenter mutters: 'He goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he baulks.' Starbuck can bear the voyage's doom, but not the particular horror of this transformation.

The carpenter grumbles at this cobbling sort of business—undignified, not his place. He likes clean, virgin, fair-and-square mathematical jobs, not work that's 'at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end.' He thinks of old women and tinkers, of bridal-bedsteads and card-tables, coffins and hearses. 'We work by the month, or by the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore.' He'll do the job tenderly. He'll hang thirty Turk's-headed life-lines all round the coffin—'thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight not seen very often beneath the sun!'

The coffin lies on two line-tubs between the vice-bench and the open hatchway. The Carpenter caulks its seams, oakum unwinding from his frock. Ahab comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, hears Pip following. 'Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently.' He turns to the Carpenter: 'Middle aisle of a church! What's here?' 'Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders.' Ahab stumbles at the hatchway; the Carpenter warns him. 'Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.'

Ahab questions the Carpenter: did not this stump come from thy shop? Art thou not also the undertaker? The Carpenter admits he patched up the thing as a coffin for Queequeg, but now they've set him to turning it into something else. Ahab presses: 'Art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling, monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a jack-of-all-trades.' The Carpenter answers: 'I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.'

Ahab asks if the Carpenter never sings working about a coffin—the Titans hummed snatches chipping out craters for volcanoes; the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in hand. The Carpenter says the caulking mallet is full of music. 'Aye, and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and what in all things makes the sounding-board is this—there's naught beneath.' Ahab presses: a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same. Has the Carpenter ever helped carry a bier, heard the coffin knock against the churchyard gate? The Carpenter begins 'Faith, sir—' and Ahab seizes on the word: 'Faith? What's that?'

Ahab breaks off and goes aft. The Carpenter reflects: 'That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot latitudes.' He's heard the Isle of Albemarle is cut by the Equator right in the middle. 'Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He's always under the Line—fiery hot, I tell ye!' He returns to his work: 'This wooden mallet is the cork, and I'm the professor of musical glasses—tap, tap!'

Ahab watches and listens. 'The greyheaded woodpecker tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now.' He sees the coffin resting on two line-tubs full of tow-lines. 'Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!'

Ahab considers—and rejects. 'I'll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me.' The Carpenter's mallet drives him to the edge of something he cannot accept. 'Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return again.'

Ahab goes below to Pip. 'Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds must empty into thee!' The chapter closes on Ahab's strange communion with the mad boy—seeking in Pip's brokenness what he cannot find in the Carpenter's hollow sounding-board or the coffin's transformed meaning.

The Rachel is descried bearing directly down on the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. As the broad-winged stranger shoots nigh, the Pequod's sails fall together like burst bladders, all life fleeing from the smitten hull. The old Manxman mutters: 'Bad news; she brings bad news.' Before her commander can hail, Ahab's voice is heard: 'Hast seen the White Whale?' 'Aye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?'

Ahab throttles his joy at news of the White Whale and would board the stranger, but the stranger captain descends his own side and springs to the Pequod's deck. Ahab recognizes a Nantucketer he knows. No formal salutation. 'Where was he?—not killed!—not killed!' The captain tells his story: three boats engaged with a shoal of whales, miles from the ship, when Moby Dick loomed up to leeward. A fourth boat—the swiftest keeled of all—was lowered in chase. The man at the mast-head saw the diminished dotted boat, a swift gleam of bubbling white water, and after that nothing more.

The recall signals were placed in the rigging; darkness came on. Forced to pick up her three far to windward boats before questing for the fourth, the ship increased her distance from it. When the rest of the crew was safe aboard, she crowded all sail—stunsail on stunsail—after the missing boat, kindling a fire in her try-pots for a beacon. She sailed, paused, lowered boats, dashed on again, paused, lowered boats—till daylight. Yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel had been seen.

The stranger captain reveals his object: he desires the Pequod to unite with his own in the search, sailing parallel lines four or five miles apart, sweeping a double horizon. Stubb whispers to Flask: 'Some one in that missing boat wore off that Captain's best coat; mayhap, his watch.' Then the captain cries out: 'My boy, my own boy is among them. For God's sake—I beg, I conjure—' He begs Ahab for forty-eight hours. 'You must, oh, you must, and you shall do this thing.'

Stubb's cynicism collapses. 'His son! oh, it's his son he's lost! I take back the coat and watch—what says Ahab? We must save that boy.' The old Manxman stands behind them: 'He's drowned with the rest on 'em, last night. I heard; all of ye heard their spirits.' The fuller story emerges: the captain had two sons aboard, separated during the dark vicissitudes of the chase. The mate picked up the majority first; one son was saved, one still missing—a little lad of twelve years.

The stranger beseeches his poor boon. Ahab stands like an anvil, receiving every shock without quivering. 'I will not go,' says the stranger, 'till you say aye to me. Do to me as you would have me do to you in the like case. For you too have a boy, Captain Ahab—though but a child, and nestling safely at home now—a child of your old age too—Yes, yes, you relent; I see it—' 'Avast,' cries Ahab. 'Touch not a rope-yarn.' Then: 'Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go.'

Ahab descends to his cabin, leaving the stranger transfixed. Gardiner returns to his ship. The two ships diverge their wakes. Long as the Rachel is in view, she is seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot on the sea, her yards swung round, tacking starboard and larboard, beating against head seas. Her masts and yards are thickly clustered with men, like three tall cherry trees when boys are cherrying among the boughs. 'But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.'

Pip catches Ahab's hand to follow him on deck. Ahab refuses: 'The hour is coming when Ahab would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health.' He orders Pip to stay below, to sit in his own screwed chair—'another screw to it, thou must be.'

Pip offers himself as substitute for Ahab's missing leg: 'No, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for your one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I remain a part of ye.' He will never desert Ahab as Stubb once deserted him. 'Sir, I must go with ye.'

Ahab is moved: 'Oh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless fidelity of man!—and a black! and crazy!—but methinks like-cures-like applies to him too; he grows so sane again.' Yet he holds firm: 'If thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up in him. I tell thee no; it cannot be.'

Pip cries 'Oh good master, master, master!' Ahab responds: 'Weep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad.' Then he softens: 'Listen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still know that I am there.' He takes Pip's hand: 'True art thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless thee; and if it come to that,—God for ever save thee, let what will befall.'

Ahab goes. Pip steps forward: 'Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air,—but I'm alone. Now were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he's missing. Pip! Pip! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip?' He tries the door—no lock, nor bolt, nor bar, yet it will not open. 'It must be the spell; he told me to stay here.'

Pip seats himself in Ahab's chair, against the transom, in the ship's full middle. He hallucinates a banquet: 'Ha! what's this? epaulets! epaulets! the epaulets all come crowding! Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs! What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy's host to white men with gold lace upon their coats!—Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip?' He toasts shame upon all cowards, names no names.

Pip hears Ahab's ivory foot above: 'Oh, master! master! I am indeed down-hearted when you walk over me. But here I'll stay, though this stern strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and oysters come to join me.' He will remain in the cabin, faithful to Ahab's command, even as his mind fragments and the ship seems to founder.

All other whaling waters swept, Ahab has chased his foe into an ocean-fold. He stands at the very latitude and longitude where his wound was inflicted. A vessel has been spoken that encountered Moby Dick yesterday. Now something lurks in the old man's eyes hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. 'As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew.' All their bodings, doubts, fears hide beneath their souls.

In this foreshadowing interval, all humor vanishes. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more strove to check one. Joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to finest dust, powdered in the clamped mortar of Ahab's iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever conscious that the old man's despot eye was on them.

Even as Ahab's eyes awed the crew, the inscrutable Parsee's glance awed his. A gliding strangeness invests Fedallah; ceaseless shudderings shake him; the men look dubious, half uncertain whether he is mortal substance or tremulous shadow. He has never been known to slumber or go below. He stands still for hours, never sits or leans. His wan but wondrous eyes say: 'We two watchmen never rest.'

Ahab no longer goes beneath the planks. He stands in his pivot-hole, or paces between two undeviating limits—the main-mast and the mizen—or stands in the cabin-scuttle, his hat slouched over his eyes. The night-damp gathers in beads of dew upon his stone-carved coat. The clothes that the night wet, the next day's sun dried upon him. He eats in the open air, never touches supper, never reaps his beard. His whole life becomes one watch on deck.

Ahab and Fedallah never seem to speak. At times they stand far parted in the starlight—Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast—fixedly gazing upon each other. 'As if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance.' Yet Ahab seems an independent lord, the Parsee but his slave. Still both seem yoked together, an unseen tyrant driving them—the lean shade siding the solid rib.

Three or four days slide by after meeting the Rachel; no spout has been seen. Ahab seems distrustful of his crew's fidelity—except the Pagan harpooneers. He doubts whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he seeks. He refrains from expressing his suspicions, but acts: 'I will have the first sight of the whale myself. Aye! Ahab must have the doubloon!' He rigs a nest of basketed bowlines to be hoisted to the mast-head.

Ahab looks round upon his crew—pausing on Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego, shunning Fedallah—then settles his eye on the chief mate: 'Take the rope, sir—I give it into thy hands, Starbuck.' Starbuck, the one man who has ventured to oppose him, whose faithfulness he seemed to doubt—this is the man to whom Ahab gives his whole life. He is hoisted to his perch, gazing abroad upon the sea for miles and miles.

Ahab has been aloft ten minutes when a red-billed savage sea-hawk comes wheeling and screaming round his head. The Sicilian seaman at the mizen-mast-head cries out: 'Your hat, your hat, sir!' But already the sable wing is before the old man's eyes; the long hooked bill at his head. With a scream, the black hawk darted away with his prize. An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to replace it—that omen was accounted good. But Ahab's hat was never restored. The wild hawk flew on and on; far in advance of the prow, it disappeared. A minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.

The intense Pequod sails on; the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung. Another ship is descried—most miserably misnamed the Delight. All eyes fix upon her broad beams, called shears. Upon the stranger's shears are beheld the shattered white ribs and splintered planks of what had once been a whale-boat—'as plainly as you see through the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.'

'Hast seen the White Whale?' Ahab cries. The hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail points with his trumpet to the wreck. 'Hast killed him?' 'The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that,' the other answers, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors are busy sewing together.

'Not forged!' Ahab snatches Perth's levelled iron from the crotch and holds it out. 'Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!'

The Delight's captain replies: 'Then God keep thee, old man—see'st thou that'—pointing to the hammock—'I bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only yesterday; but were dead ere night. Only that one I bury; the rest were buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb.' He turns to his crew and begins the burial service: 'may the resurrection and the life—'

Ahab interrupts like lightning: 'Brace forward! Up helm!' The suddenly started Pequod is not quick enough to escape the sound of the splash that the corpse makes as it strikes the sea. 'Not so quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.'

As Ahab glides from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy hanging at the Pequod's stern comes into conspicuous relief. A foreboding voice cries from her wake: 'Ha! yonder! look yonder, men! In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us your taffrail to show us your coffin!'

A clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea are hardly separable in that all-pervading azure. The pensive air is transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look; the robust and man-like sea heaves with long, strong swells, as Samson's chest in sleep. Aloft, the sun gives this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea, even as bride to groom. At the girdling line of the horizon, a soft tremulous motion denotes the fond, throbbing trust with which the poor bride gives her bosom away.

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals that still glow in the ashes of ruin—untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn, lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven. The invisible winged creatures frolicking round are oblivious of old Ahab's close-coiled woe.

Ahab leans over the side and watches how his shadow in the water sank and sank, the more he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. The step-mother world, so long cruel, now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

Starbuck saw the old man; saw him how he heavily leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood there. Ahab turned. 'Starbuck!' 'Sir.'

Ahab speaks: 'Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day I struck my first whale—a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty years of continual whaling! Forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! Forty years on the pitiless sea! I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been—oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!'

Ahab speaks of his young girl-wife, wedded past fifty, sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in his marriage pillow. 'Wife? wife?—rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck.' He speaks of the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood with which old Ahab has furiously chased his prey—'more a demon than a man!' He calls himself a forty years' fool. 'Is it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been snatched from under me?'

Ahab asks Starbuck to brush aside his hair. 'Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes!' He asks if he looks very old. 'I feel deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise.' He bids Starbuck stand close: 'Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye.'

Ahab tells Starbuck: 'No, no; stay on board, on board!—lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see in that eye!'

Starbuck pleads: 'Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's—wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!—this instant let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again!'

Ahab yields: 'They have, they have. I have seen them—some summer days in the morning. About this time—yes, it is his noon nap now—the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back to dance him again.' Starbuck cries: 'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!'

But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil. He speaks: 'What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time?'

Ahab continues: 'Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.' He speaks of the mild wind, the air that smells of a far-away meadow, the mowers sleeping among the new-mown hay. 'Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field.'

But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away. Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly leaning over the same rail.

In the mid-watch Ahab steps forth from the scuttle, thrusts out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog. He declares a whale must be near. Soon the peculiar odor of the living sperm whale is palpable to all. Ahab orders the ship's course altered, the sail shortened.

At daybreak a long sleek is sighted directly ahead—smooth as oil, resembling the polished metallic-like marks of some swift tide-rip. Ahab cries: 'Man the mast-heads! Call all hands!' Daggoo rouses the sleepers with thundering claps of three clubbed handspikes. 'What d'ye see?' 'Nothing, nothing sir!' 'T'gallant sails!—stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!'

Ahab casts loose the life-line and is hoisted to the main royal-mast head. While but two thirds of the way aloft he raises a gull-like cry: 'There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!' The men rush to the rigging. From this height the whale is seen some mile ahead, his high sparkling hump, his silent spout. 'And did none of ye see it before?' Tashtego says he cried out the same instant. 'Not the same instant; not the same—no, the doubloon is mine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could have raised the White Whale first.'

Ahab cries: 'He's going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship.' Soon all the boats but Starbuck's are dropped; all the boat-sails set; all the paddles plying; Ahab heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lights up Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnaws his mouth.

Like noiseless nautilus shells their light prows sped through the sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. The ocean grew still more smooth; seemed a noon-meadow. The whale's dazzling hump is distinctly visible, sliding along as if an isolated thing, set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. A tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projects from the white whale's back. A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness—invests the gliding whale. 'Not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.'

The whale still withholds the full terrors of his submerged trunk. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural Bridge; warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight. The white sea-fowls linger over the agitated pool. With oars apeak, the three boats stilly float, awaiting Moby Dick's reappearance. 'An hour,' says Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern.

The breeze freshens; the sea begins to swell. 'The birds!—the birds!' cries Tashtego. In long Indian file the white birds fly towards Ahab's boat, fluttering over the water with joyous, expectant cries. Ahab peers down into the depths and sees a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, uprising with wonderful celerity—two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth. It is Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw. The glittering mouth yawns beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb. Ahab whirls the craft aside.

Moby Dick sidelingly transplants himself, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat. The whale takes the bows full within his mouth. The bluish pearl-white of the inside of the jaw is within six inches of Ahab's head. The White Whale shakes the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. Ahab seizes the long bone with his naked hands, wildly strives to wrench it from its gripe. The jaw slips from him; the gunwales bend in, collapse, snap; both jaws bite the craft completely in twain. Ahab falls flat-faced upon the sea.

Moby Dick lies at a little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the billows, slowly revolving his whole spindled body—pitchpoling. The swells break against his risen forehead. He swims swiftly round and round the wrecked crew, sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake. The sight of the splintered boat seems to madden him. Ahab, half smothered in the foam, helpless, his head like a tossed bubble. The other boats dare not pull into the eddy. They remain on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre is the old man's head.

From the ship's mast heads all has been descried. The Pequod bears down upon the scene. Ahab in the water hails her—'Sail on the'—but a breaking sea dashes on him from Moby Dick. He rises on a towering crest: 'Sail on the whale!—Drive him off!' The Pequod's prows break the charmed circle; she parts the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly swims off, the boats fly to the rescue.

Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine caking in his wrinkles, Ahab's bodily strength cracks; he lies all crushed in the bottom of the boat, like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails come from him. But soon he half rises: 'The harpoon—is it safe?' 'Aye, sir.' 'Any missing men?' 'Five oars, sir, and here are five men.' 'That's good.—Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there! there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!—Hands off from me! The eternal sap runs up in Ahab's bones again! Set the sail; out oars; the helm!'

The added power of the boat does not equal the added power of the whale. The boats make for the ship, are swayed up to their cranes. The Pequod stacks her canvas high up, sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an albatross; she bears down in the leeward wake of Moby Dick. At methodic intervals the whale's glittering spout is announced. Ahab paces the deck, binnacle-watch in hand; so soon as the last second of the allotted hour expires: 'Whose is the doubloon now? D'ye see him?'

Ahab paces the deck, uttering no sound except to hail the men aloft. At every turn he passes his own wrecked boat, dropped upon the quarter-deck, reversed; broken bow to shattered stern. At last he pauses before it; over the old man's face there steals some added gloom. Stubb advances and laughs: 'The thistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!' Ahab: 'What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Groan nor laugh should be heard before a wreck.' Starbuck: 'Tis a solemn sight; an omen, and an ill one.' Ahab: 'Omen? omen?—the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint.—Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors!'

The day is nearly done; only the hem of his golden robe is rustling. 'Can't see the spout now, sir;—too dark.' 'Good! he will travel slower now 'tis night.' Ahab orders the sails shortened. Then advancing towards the doubloon in the main-mast: 'Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide here till the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him, upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man's; and if on that day I shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye!' He places himself half way within the scuttle, and slouching his hat, stands there till dawn.

At daybreak the mast-heads are punctually manned afresh. 'D'ye see him?' cries Ahab. 'See nothing, sir.' 'Turn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought for.' The ship tears on, leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a cannon-ball becomes a plough-share. Stubb cries: 'This ship and I are two brave fellows! Ha, ha! we go the gait that leaves no dust behind!'

The frenzies of the chase have worked them bubblingly up, like old wine worked anew. Whatever pale fears they might have felt are routed. The hand of Fate has snatched all their souls. They are one man, not thirty—all individualities welded into oneness, all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel does point to. The rigging lives. The mast-heads are outspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. 'Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them!'

A cry from the mast-head: 'There she blows—she blows!—she blows!—right ahead!' Minutes pass. Ahab: 'Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him? Sway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet that way, and then disappears.' It is even so; in their headlong eagerness the men had mistaken some other thing for the whale-spout.

Hardly has Ahab reached his perch when the triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs is heard—less than a mile ahead, Moby Dick bodily bursts into view. Not by calm spoutings, but by breaching: rising with utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, piling up a mountain of dazzling foam. 'There she breaches! there she breaches!' The spray he raises intolerably glitters and glares like a glacier. Ahab: 'Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick! thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand!'

The men slide to the deck like shooting stars. Ahab reaches his boat—a spare one, rigged the afternoon previous. 'Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine—keep away from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!' Moby Dick has turned and is now coming for the three crews. Ahab's boat is central; he tells them he will take the whale head-and-head—pull straight up to his forehead. But ere that close limit is gained, the White Whale churning himself into furious speed rushes among the boats with open jaws and a lashing tail, offering appalling battle on every side, heedless of the irons darted at him, intent only on annihilating each separate plank.

The White Whale so crossed and recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three lines, that they foreshortened and warped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him. Ahab seizes the opportunity to pay out more line, then haul and jerk to disencumber it of snarls—when lo! caught and twisted in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons and lances came flashing and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Ahab's boat. He seizes the boat-knife, reaches within and through the rays of steel, sundering the rope near the chocks, drops the intercepted fagot of steel into the sea.

That instant the White Whale makes a sudden rush among the remaining tangles; irresistibly drags the boats of Stubb and Flask towards his flukes; dashes them together like two rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach; then diving down into the sea, disappears in a boiling maelstrom. The crews circle in the waters, reaching out after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and floating furniture. Ahab's yet unstricken boat seems drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires—as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashes his broad forehead against its bottom, sends it turning over and over into the air; till it falls again—gunwale downwards—and Ahab and his men struggle out from under it, like seals from a sea-side cave.

The whale lies for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from side to side; whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, touches his skin, his tail swiftly draws back and comes sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work for that time is done, he pushes his pleated forehead through the ocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continues his leeward way at a traveller's methodic pace.

The attentive ship comes bearing down to the rescue, dropping a boat, picking up the floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks—all these are there; but no fatal or even serious ill seems to have befallen any one. Ahab is found grimly clinging to his boat's broken half. But when he is helped to the deck, all eyes are fastened upon him: his ivory leg has been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter.

Ahab still half-hangs upon the shoulder of Starbuck. 'Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he will; and would old Ahab had leaned oftener than he has.' The carpenter: 'The ferrule has not stood, sir; I put good work into that leg.' Stubb: 'But no bones broken, sir, I hope.' Ahab: 'Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!—d'ye see it.—But even with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living bone of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor white whale, nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and inaccessible being.'

Ahab asks for a cane—'that shivered lance will do.' He bids them muster the men. 'Surely I have not seen him yet. By heaven it cannot be!—missing?—quick! call them all.' The old man's hinted thought is true. Upon mustering the company, the Parsee is not there. Stubb: 'he must have been caught in——' Ahab: 'The black vomit wrench thee!—run all of ye above, alow, cabin, forecastle—find him—not gone—not gone!' But quickly they return with the tidings that the Parsee is nowhere to be found. Stubb: 'caught among the tangles of your line—I thought I saw him dragging under.' Ahab: 'My line! my line? Gone?—gone? What means that little word?—What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry.'

Starbuck cries: 'Great God! but for one single instant show thyself. Never, never wilt thou capture him, old man—In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone—all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:—what more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more!'

Ahab replies: 'Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that hour we both saw—thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand—a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders.' He stands round the men: 'Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab—his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs.'

Ahab speaks of omens: 'Believe ye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick—two days he's floated—tomorrow will be the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,—but only to spout his last! D'ye feel brave men, brave?' Stubb: 'As fearless fire.' Ahab mutters: 'And as mechanical.' He thinks on the Parsee: 'The Parsee—the Parsee!—gone, gone? and he was to go before:—but still was to be seen again ere I could perish—How's that?—There's a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of judges:—like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain. I'll, I'll solve it, though!'

When dusk descends, the whale is still in sight to leeward. The sail is shortened; everything passes nearly as on the previous night—only, the sound of hammers and the hum of the grindstone is heard till nearly daylight, as the men toil by lanterns rigging the spare boats and sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. The carpenter makes Ahab another leg from the broken keel of his wrecked craft. Slouched Ahab stands fixed within his scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.