









	CHAPTER CXXXII. 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.
	
	But though thus contrasting within	 the contrast was only in shades and
	shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex	 as it were	
	that distinguished them.
	
	Aloft	 like a royal czar and king	 the sun seemed giving this gentle
	air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the
	girdling line of the horizon	 a soft and tremulous motion--most seen
	here at the equator--denoted the fond	 throbbing trust	 the loving
	alarms	 with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.
	
	Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm
	and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals	 that still glow in the
	ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the
	morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's
	forehead of heaven.
	
	Oh	 immortal infancy	 and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged
	creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how
	oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen
	little Miriam and Martha	 laughing-eyed elves	 heedlessly gambol around
	their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on
	the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
	
	Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle	 Ahab leaned over the side	
	and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze	 the
	more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the
	lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel	 for a
	moment	 the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad	 happy air	 that
	winsome sky	 did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world	
	so long cruel--forbidding--now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn
	neck	 and did seem to joyously sob over him	 as if over one	 that
	however wilful and erring	 she could yet find it in her heart to save
	and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into
	the sea; nor did all the pacific contain such wealth as that one wee
	drop.
	
	Starbuck saw the old man; saw him	 how he heavily leaned over the side;
	and he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing
	that stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to
	touch him	 or be noticed by him	 he yet drew near to him	 and stood
	there.
	
	Ahab turned.
	
	Starbuck!
	
	Sir.
	
	Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such
a day--very much such a sweetness as this--I struck my first whale--a
boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty--forty--forty years ago!--ago! Forty
years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and
storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab
forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors
of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not
spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the
desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a
Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any
sympathy from the green country without--oh, weariness! heaviness!
Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!--when I think of all this;
only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before--and how for forty
years I have fed upon dry salted fare--fit emblem of the dry nourishment
of my soul--when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily
hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts--away,
whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and
sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage
pillow--wife? wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I
widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the
madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with
which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly
chased his prey--more a demon than a man!--aye, aye! what a forty years'
fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this strife of the chase?
why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance?
how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not
hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been
snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me,
that I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some
ashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel
deadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering
beneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!--crack my
heart!--stave my brain!--mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey
hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus
intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a
human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to
gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is
the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no;
stay on board, on board!--lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives
chase to Moby Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with
the far away home I see in that eye!
	
	Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!
why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us
fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are
Starbuck's--wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow
youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,
longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away!--this instant let me alter
the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl
on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some
such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.
	
	They have, they have. I have seen them--some summer days in the
morning. About this time--yes, it is his noon nap now--the boy
vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of
cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back
to dance him again.
	
	Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning,
should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his
father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket!
Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the
boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!
	
	But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook	 and
	cast his last	 cindered apple to the soil.
	
	What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what
cozzening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep
pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly
making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not
so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this
arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy
in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible
power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain
think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does
that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round
in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all
the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon
Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where
do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged
to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and
the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have
been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and
the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we
how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust
amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the
half-cut swaths--Starbuck!
	
	But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair	 the Mate had stolen away.
	
	Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at
	two reflected	 fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly
	leaning over the same rail.
	
	
	
	

