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MOBY DICK; OR 
howling around ns, 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 u 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 Tormentoto, 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 beck- 
oning 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 practi- 
cal 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. Mean- 
time, 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 bul- 
warks in the waist ; and the better to guard against the leaping waves, 
