Chapter 53.00: CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.

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CHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.
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Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept
across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the Cape de
Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la
Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from
St. Helena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and
moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and,
by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence,
not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in
advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked
celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.
Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was
his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with
the same precision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales
were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering
for them. You may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this
old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon,
companions in one sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there
for several successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after
all this silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery,
moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some
winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew.
“There she blows!” Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have
quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though
it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so
deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively
desired a lowering.

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the
t’gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best
man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the
piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheaving,
lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many
sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet;
while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were
struggling in her—one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive
yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab’s face that
night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were
warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every
stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this
old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every
eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more
seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.

This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days
after, lo! At the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was
descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it
disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after
night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into
the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing
again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at
every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and further in our
van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.

Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance with
the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the
Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and
wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart
latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same
whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense
of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously
beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon
us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous
potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath
all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for
days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild,
that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating
itself of life before our urn-like prow.

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling
around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are
there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored
the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the
foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life
went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither
before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And
every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and
spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as
though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing
appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their
homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black
sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul
were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called of
yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended
us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty
beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to
swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air
without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing
its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before,
the solitary jet would at times be descried.

During all this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for the
time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck,
manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed his
mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything above and aloft
has been secured, nothing more can be done but passively to await the
issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become practical fatalists. So,
with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed hole, and with one hand
firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would stand gazing dead
to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow would all but
congeal his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the
forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over
its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better
to guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a
sort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened
belt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by
painted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift
madness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of
humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the
men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even
when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not seek that repose
in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old man’s aspect, when one
night going down into the cabin to mark how the barometer stood, he saw
him with closed eyes sitting straight in his floor-screwed chair; the rain
and half-melted sleet of the storm from which he had some time before
emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. On the
table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides and currents
which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his tightly
clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so that
the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that
swung from a beam in the ceiling. *

*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to the
compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself of the
course of the ship.

Terrible old man! Thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this gale,
still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.