CHAPTER 51
The Spirit-Spout
Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly
swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the Cape
de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la
Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from
St. Helena.
It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by
their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a
solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the
white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed
some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first
descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to
the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as
if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not
one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may
think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched
aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one
sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there for several
successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this
silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet,
every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had
lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. “There she blows!” Had
the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still
they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was a most unwonted hour,
yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every
soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.
Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best man
in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the
piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting
tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made the
buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet; while still she
rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her—one
to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal
goal. And had you watched Ahab’s face that night, you would have thought
that in him also two different things were warring. While his one live leg
made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded
like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship
so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances
shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he
saw it once, but not a second time.
This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some
days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was
descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it
disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after night, till
no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear
moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing again for one
whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at every distinct
repetition to be advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary
jet seemed for ever alluring us on.
Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance
with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the
Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever
and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart
latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one selfsame
whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of
peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously
beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us,
and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.
These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a
wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which,
beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm,
as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily,
lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand,
seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling
around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there;
when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the
dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foamflakes
flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but
gave place to sights more dismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither
before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And every
morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of
our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they
deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to
desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And
heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides
were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and
remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.
Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called
of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended
us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty
beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to
swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air
without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing
its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the
solitary jet would at times be descried.
During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for the
time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck,
manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed his
mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and aloft has
been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await the issue of
the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists. So, with his
ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand firmly
grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead to
windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal
his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward
part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,
stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to guard
against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a sort of
bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened belt. Few or
no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors
in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of
the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the
shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the
bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied
nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose in his
hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one
night going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw
him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain and
half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before
emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the
table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents which
have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his tightly
clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so
that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that
swung from a beam in the ceiling.*
*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the
compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the
course of the ship.
Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this gale,
still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.
