CHAPTER 52
The Albatross
South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising
ground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by
name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head,
I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean
fisheries— a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.
As if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the skeleton
of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral appearance was
traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all her spars and her
rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over with hoar-frost.
Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see her long-bearded
look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed clad in the skins of
beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly four
years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed
and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided
close under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each other that
we might almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of
the other; yet, those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they
passed, said not one word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail
was being heard from below.
“Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?”
But as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the
act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into
the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to make himself
heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing the distance
between us. While in various silent ways the seamen of the Pequod were
evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the first mere mention
of the White Whale’s name to another ship, Ahab for a moment paused; it
almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to board the
stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage of his
windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect
that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he
loudly hailed—”Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the world!
Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific ocean! and this time
three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to-”
At that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in
accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for
some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away
with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves fore and aft with
the stranger’s flanks. Though in the course of his continual voyagings Ahab
must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet, to any monomaniac
man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings.
“Swim away from me, do ye?” murmured Ahab, gazing over into the
water. There seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of
deep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But
turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind
to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion voice,—”Up helm!
Keep her off round the world!”
Round the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings;
but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through
numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that we
left behind secure, were all the time before us.
Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for
ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than
any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the
voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented
chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all
human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us
on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.
