Starbuck’s Plea
Starbuck cries out to God, begging that He show himself for even a single instant, then pleads with the old man never to capture the whale. He catalogues the horrors of the two-day chase: twice stove to splinters, Ahab’s very leg again snatched from under him, evil shadows gone, and good angels mobbing him with warnings. He asks desperately what more Ahab would have, questioning whether they should keep chasing the murderous fish until it swamps the last man, whether they should be dragged to the bottom of the sea or towed by the whale to the infernal world. He denounces the pursuit as impiety and blasphemy.
Ahab Defiant
Ahab admits to feeling strangely moved toward Starbuck since an hour when they both saw something in each other’s eyes, but declares that in the matter of the whale, Starbuck’s face must be to him as a blank lipless wall. He insists Ahab is forever Ahab, that this whole act is immutably decreed, rehearsed a billion years before the ocean rolled. He calls Starbuck an underling and commands his obedience. Standing cut down to a stump, leaning on a shivered lance, propped on a lonely foot, Ahab declares that though his body is diminished, his soul is a centipede moving on a hundred legs. He likens himself to ropes towing a dismasted frigate in a gale, warning that though he may look strained, they will hear him crack before he breaks. He invokes the omen that drowning things rise twice before sinking forever, predicting the whale will rise once more on the third day, only to spout his last.
Preparations for Tomorrow
When dusk falls, the whale remains visible to leeward. The sail is shortened again, and preparations continue nearly as on the previous night. The sound of hammers and the hum of the grindstone continues until nearly daylight as the men labor by lanterns, carefully rigging the spare boats and sharpening fresh weapons for tomorrow’s confrontation. Meanwhile, the carpenter constructs a new leg from the broken keel of Ahab’s wrecked craft. Throughout the night, Ahab stands fixed within his scuttle, his heliotrope glance anticipatingly turned backward on its dial, as he sits facing eastward, waiting for the earliest sun and the resumption of the chase.
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