THE WHITE WHALE 
143 
“Why, thou monkey,” said a harpooneer to one of these lads, “we’ve 
been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised 
a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen’s teeth whenever thou art up 
here.” Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals 
of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listless- 
ness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the 
blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his 
identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that 
deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature : and every 
strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him ; every dimly 
discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the 
embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by 
continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit 
ebbs away to whence it came ; becomes diffused through time and space ; 
like Wickliff’s sprinkled ashes forming at last a part of every shore 
the round globe over. 
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a 
gently rolling ship ; by her, borrowed from the sea ; by the sea, from 
the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on 
ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your 
identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. 
And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled 
shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no 
more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists ! 
CHAPTER XXXY 
THE QUARTER-DECK 
(Enter Ahab: Then , all.) 
It was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning 
shortly after breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin gang- 
way to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, 
as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in the 
garden. 
Soon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his 
