CHAPTER XXXVIII. DUSK


By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it.

My soul is more than matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman!
Insufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But
he drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I
see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill
I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have
no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries;--aye, he
would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below!
Oh! I plainly see my miserable office,--to obey, rebelling; and worse
yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe
would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow
wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the
small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God
may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole
clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to
lift again.

[A burst of revelry from the forecastle.]

Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of
human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white
whale is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is
forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life.
Foremost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled,
bantering bow, but only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods
within his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake,
and further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills
me through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! 'tis in
an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,--as wild,
untutored things are forced to feed--Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel
the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me!
and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight
ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye
blessed influences!




