Moby Dick

they must also have food for their more common, daily appetites.
For even the high lifted and chivalric Crusaders of old times
were not content to traverse two thousand miles of land to fight
for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries,
picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way.
Had they been strictly held to their one final and romantic object--
that final and romantic object, too many would have turned
from in disgust.  I will not strip these men, thought Ahab,
of all hopes of cash--aye, cash.  They may scorn cash now;
but let some months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them,
and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them,
this same cash would soon cashier Ahab.

Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more
related to Ahab personally.  Having impulsively, it is probable,
and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private
purpose of the Pequod's voyage, Ahab was now entirely conscious that,
in so doing, he had indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable
charge of usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal,
his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all
further obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command.
From even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible
consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground,
Ahab must of course have been most anxious to protect himself.
That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain
and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention
to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his
crew to be subjected to.

For all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be verbally
developed here, Ahab plainly saw that he must still in a good degree
continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Pequod's voyage;
observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force himself
to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general pursuit
of his profession.

Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard
hailing the three mastheads and admonishing them to keep
a bright look-out, and not omit reporting even a porpoise.
This vigilance was not long without reward.



CHAPTER 47

The Mat-Maker


It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging
about the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-colored waters.
Queequeg and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,
for an additional lashing to our boat.  So still and subdued and yet
somehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of revelry
lurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his
own invisible self.

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat.
As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline
between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle,
and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy
oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon
the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn;
I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over
the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting
dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were
the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically
weaving and weaving away at the Fates.  There lay the fixed
threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning,
unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit
of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own.
This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own
hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into
these unalterable threads.  Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive,
indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly,
or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;
and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a
corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric;
this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions
both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance--
aye, chance, free will, and necessity--no wise incompatible--
all interweavingly working together.  The straight warp
of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course--
its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that;
free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;
and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines
of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will,
though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either,
and has the last featuring blow at events.


Thus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound
so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly,
that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood
gazing up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing.
High aloft in the cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego.
His body was reaching eagerly forward, his hand stretched out
like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he continued his cries.
To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps being
heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's look-outs
perched as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could