CHAPTER 116
The Dying Whale
Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune’s favorites sail
close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing
breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed it with the
Pequod. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were
seen and four were slain; and one of them by Ahab.
It was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the crimson
fight were done; and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky, sun and
whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and such
plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air, that it
almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the
Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to
sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.
Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Ahab, who had sterned
off from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the now
tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm whales
dying—the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring— that strange
spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a
wondrousness unknown before.
“He turns and turns him to it,—how slowly, but how steadfastly, his
homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too
worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!— Oh that
these too-favoring eyes should see these too-favoring sights. Look! here, far
water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these most candid
and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets; where for
long Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and unspoken
to, as stars that shine upon the Niger’s unknown source; here, too, life dies
sunwards full of faith, but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the
corpse, and it heads some other way.
“Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast
builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured
seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the
wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor has
this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round again,
without a lesson to me.
“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring,
rainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh
whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only
calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou darker half, rock me
with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings float
beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as
air, but water now.
“Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl
finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill and
valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!”
