152 
MOBY DICK; OR 
Blinded Bendigoes ! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies, — Take 
some one of your own size; don’t pommel me! No, ye’ve knocked me 
down, and I am up again, but ye have run and hidden. Come forth 
from behind your cotton bags ! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, 
Abab’s compliments to ye ; come and see if you can swerve me. Swerve 
me ? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves ! man has ye there. 
Swerve me? T*he path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron nails, 
whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through 
the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush ! 
Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way! 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
DUSK 
(By the mainmast ; Starbuclc 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 he 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-in- 
sulting 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 demogorgon. Hark ! the infernal orgies ! that 
revelry is forward ! mark the unfaltering silence aft ! Methinks it 
