Moby Dick

"Your hat, your hat, sir!" suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman,
who being posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab,
though somewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf
of air dividing them.

But already the sable wing was before the old man's eyes;
the long hooked bill at his head:  with a scream, the black
hawk darted away with his prize.

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's head, removing his cap to
replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin
would be king of Rome.  But only by the replacing of the cap
was that omen accounted good.  Ahab's hat was never restored;
the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in advance of the prow:
and at last disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance,
a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast
height into the sea.



CHAPTER 131

The Pequod Meets The Delight



The intense Pequod sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by;
the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship,
most miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried.
As she drew nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad beams,
called shears, which, in some whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck
at the height of eight or nine feet; serving to carry the spare,
unrigged, or disabled boats.

Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs,
and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat;
but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through
the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.

"Hast seen the White Whale?"

"Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail;
and with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck.

"Hast killed him?"

"The harpoon is not yet forged that will ever will do that,"
answered the other, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on
the deck, whose gathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy
in sewing together.

"Not forged!" and snatching Perth's levelled iron from the crotch,
Ahab held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye, Nantucketer; here in this
hand I hold his death!  Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning
are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place
behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"

"Then God keep thee, old man--see'st thou that"--
pointing to the hammock--"I bury but one of five stout men,
who were alive only yesterday; but were dead ere night.
Only that one I bury; the rest were buried before they died;
you sail upon their tomb."  Then turning to his crew--"Are
ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and lift
the body; so, then--Oh!  God"--advancing towards the hammock
with uplifted hands--"may the resurrection and the life-"

"Brace forward!  Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men.

But the suddenly started Pequod was not quick enough to escape
the sound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea;
not so quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have
sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.

As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy
hanging at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief.

"Ha! yonder! look yonder, men!" cried a foreboding voice in her wake.
"In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us
your taffrail to show us your coffin!"



CHAPTER 132

The Symphony


It was a clear steel-blue day.  The firmaments of air and sea were
hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air
was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust
and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells,
as Samson's chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,
unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;
but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue,
rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were
the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.