Moby Dick

But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards
the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.

"East-sou-east, sir," said the frightened steersman.

"Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched fist.
"Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?"

Upon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just
then observed by Ahab had unaccountably escaped every one else;
but its very blinding palpableness must have been the cause.

Thrusting his head half-way into the binnacle, Ahab caught
one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell;
for a moment he almost seemed to stagger.  Standing behind
him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed East,
and the Pequod was as infallibly going West.

But ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old
man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, "I have it!  It has happened before.
Mr. Starbuck, last night's thunder turned our compasses--that's all.
Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it."

"Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said the
pale mate, gloomily.

Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have
in more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms.
The magnetic energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is,
as all know, essentially one with the electricity beheld in heaven;
hence it is not to be much marvelled at, that such things should be.
In instances where the lightning has actually struck the vessel,
so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect upon
the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone
virtue being annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no
more use than an old wife's knitting needle.  But in either case,
the needle never again, of itself, recovers the original virtue
thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be affected,
the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship;
even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.

Deliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing
the transpointed compasses, the old man, with the sharp
of his extended hand, now took the precise bearing of the sun,
and satisfied that the needles were exactly inverted, shouted out
his orders for the ship's course to be changed accordingly.
The yards were hard up; and once more the Pequod thrust her
undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair
one had only been juggling her.

Meanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck
said nothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders;
while Stubb and Flask--who in some small degree seemed then
to be sharing his feelings--likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced.
As for the men, though some of them lowly rumbled, their fear
of Ahab was greater than their fear of Fate.  But as ever before,
the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly unimpressed;
or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot
into their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's.

For a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries.
But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed
copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed
to the deck.

"Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I
wrecked thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me.
So, so.  But Ahab is lord over the level loadstone yet.
Mr. Starbuck--a lance without the pole; a top-maul, and the smallest
of the sail-maker's needles.  Quick!"

Accessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about
to do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been
to revive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill,
in a matter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses.
Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed needles,
though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by
superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.

"Men," said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate
handed him the things he had demanded, "my men, the thunder
turned old Ahab's needles; but out of this bit of steel Ahab
can make one of his own, that will point as true as any."

Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors,
as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever
magic might follow.  But Starbuck looked away.

With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel head of
the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining,
bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck.
Then, with the maul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this
iron rod, he placed the blunted needle endwise on the top of it,
and less strongly hammered that, several times, the mate still holding
the rod as before.  Then going through some small strange motions
with it--whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel,
or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain--
he called for linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out
the two reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the