213 
THE WHITE WHALE 
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 yawningly 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 ; disappear- 
ing again for one whole day, or two days or three ; and somehow seem- 
ing 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 accord- 
ance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things in- 
vested 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 devil- 
ish 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 
